Summer trip #1: A Civil War theme

Regular followers of the Bragg Family South blog are accustomed to seeing us in our native element, the woods, and at many historical sites, so the picture above is a two-fer special--a large ash tree growing in a battlefield cemetery on the grounds of Stones River National Battlefield (http://www.nps.gov/stri/index.htm) near Nashville, Tennessee.  This was one of numerous Civil War-related sites we stopped at during our most recent trip (but it wasn't the first--the previous day we had stopped at a battle site named Fort Pillow not too far north of Memphis, but I didn't really get any good pictures there...).  Stones River is not one of the better known Civil War battles, but it was as bloody and nasty as any of the more famous ones, and certainly horribly so to the many unknown soldiers buried there:

We were on our way to meet up with Hope's parents in Kentucky so Hope and the kids could take them in our van to their home in Michigan while I took the Pruden's car to a business meeting I had in Indiana.  We met near Bardstown, Kentucky, the surrounding area which contains Abraham Lincoln's birthplace and boyhood home, which we quickly visited:

We have visited many of Lincoln's homes through his youth to maturity, all of which helped to define his character.  Below is a picture of the stone fireplace in the small cabin above:

While I attended my business meeting, Hope and the kids spent several days visit Rick and Ann Pruden, including a stop at a museum on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor:

 

I included the picture above for my archeology friends, who often get asked if dinosaurs are what archeologists are digging for...Reminiscent of the times I get asked if my job is as a park ranger...Below, Kenny hams it up (Jurassic Park style): 

Meantime, I was attending a small but very good forest ecology meeting in Bloomington, Indiana.  One of the days was a field trip to some of the research projects of the faculty and students of nearby Indiana University.  One research area still had an old fire tower they let us climb into:

Upon the conclusion of my meeting I drove to meet the family at the Pruden home in Whitmore Lake.  In the picture below I am giving Rick Pruden a good "lesson" in how to pitch horseshoes:

Hope and the kids had several days in Michigan, but my time was limited to a brief overnight stay.  The next morning we got into two cars and crossed into Canada via the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.  Our first destination was Ft. Malden National Historic Site (http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/on/malden/visit.aspx), which was a British fort not too far from Detroit.  Below, Kenny and Beth help a couple reenactors with part of the daily life display at the fort:

Fort Malden was a brief stop before a lunch (which included one of the national dishes of Canada, poutine, which is basically French fries with cheese in brown gravy) and then the journey to our ultimate destination, Niagara Falls:

Niagara Falls is everything you'd expect for a tourist destination on a pretty summer weekend day--spectacular but teeming with tourists!  Still, plenty of good photo ops:

Rick and Ann enjoy coming here, especially since it is about a half-days drive from their home:

 

We have also visited Niagara Falls during the winter, which is much colder but still spectacular (and far less crowded!).  The Niagara Falls area in Canada has a large number of wineries that we've vowed to visit our next trip through... After our visit at the Falls, we parted ways with the Prudens...they returned home, and we turned south back into the US past the city of Buffalo, New York towards a small town in southern New York to stay the night.  The next day, we drove into Pennsylvania towards our next Civil War destination, Gettysburg:

Beth, who has always told us her favorite president was Abraham Lincoln, got to pose for a picture with Abe:

Gettysburg was very busy on this day (Saturday) with many tourists and Boy Scouts.  Hard to truly get a sense of the conflict from the traffic and congestion of this park.  We were able to see most of the main sites of this battle, including the copse of trees that was the target of Pickett's charge on the final climatic day of battle:

Gettysburg was a stop worth making, as we have seen and heard so much about the "high water mark" of the Confederacy, but the crowds were overwhelming and diminished the experience greatly.  I'm sure part of the crush was due to the 150th anniversary of this battle, which at the time was only a couple weeks off...As a side note, many people do not know that in addition to the loss at Gettysburg, Confederate armies also suffered two additional major military defeats during that first week of July, 1863, with the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, a major Mississippi River port, and at the Battle of Helena (Arkansas), which was an attempt to provide relief to the besieged Vicksburg.

After wrapping up our visit to Gettysburg, we headed south towards our next hotel and enjoyed a nice supper at an Irish restaurant.  Prior to reaching our hotel in Hagerstown, Maryland, we decided to take a short scenic detour through what looked to be a smallish state park along the way.  As we drove into the rugged hills along a pretty rocky stream valley, we were surprised to find a national park in these wooded hills...Catoctin Mountain Park (http://www.nps.gov/cato/index.htm).  Though very pretty, we were amazed that this place was a national park:

 

Besides the activities of the CCC and the pretty stream, there was nothing particularly special about this park...The sun was starting to set, so we got out and hiked one of the trails and continued driving along the winding mountain roads:

Notice the green grassy carpet in these open woods...very pretty!  As we drove, all of the sudden we came to an area that had a bunch of signs warning people not to stop or take pictures.  This seemed very strange...a national park warning against hiking and picture taking?  Only later that evening did we find out what that area was...Camp David!!  (The Presidential retreat...)

Our destination the next morning was our next Civil War stop--the Antietam battlefield.  Antietam was the climatic battle of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North, and was fought in the rolling countryside of this part of Maryland:

This small, modest church is a reconstruction of some of the major action during this very bloody battle.  Antietam had a much different feel to it than Gettysburg...granted, we arrived much earlier in the day, but this site is not as prominent on the tourist trails, and much less developed.  Still really has the quiet country feel to it...

 Below is a picture of one of the other major locations of battle, a sunken country road that witnessed incredible slaughter:

Below is a stone bridge (Burnside's Bridge) that also saw a lot of fighting.  Apparently, the large sycamore tree growing near the bridge was a small tree during the battle that survived:

We also made a quick stop at a small location along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historic Park (http://www.nps.gov/choh/index.htm), which follows the route of this historic trade route and canal along the Potomac River:

This was an antebellum plantation and has been preserved to record a slice of life before the Civil War changed this area.  Stephen, Beth, and Kenny (background) dressed the part, if briefly:

 

After these visits, we continued south into Virginia, and our next national park destination, Shenandoah.  We drove into this pretty mountain range along a spectacular highway with many great scenic overlooks:

 

The forester in me can't help but notice the dead trees in the picture above--these are eastern hemlocks, killed by a small insect pest known as the hemlock woolly adelgid.  Sad to say, it seems likely that this bug will eventually move into the Northwoods of Wisconsin and Michigan and kill most of the hemlocks there, too...

We spent the next day exploring parts of southern West Virginia, including the New River National River (http://www.nps.gov/neri/index.htm).  Below are some locally crafted quilts hanging in the visitor center of this park:

The New River is probably best known for the tall bridge which spans the river--the road that crosses it is 876 feet above the river, making it the third highest bridge in the US after the new span at Hoover Dam and Royal Gorge in Colorado.  The picture below does NOT do this bridge justice:

For scale, the highway crossing this bridge is 4 lanes wide (basically an interstate)!  Though best known for the bridge, the New River National River also boasts lots of whitewater, waterfalls, and tens of thousands of forested acres in the steep canyon of this river.  A pretty spectacular place that we'll have to visit again in the future.  That evening, we crossed out of West Virginia and spent the evening at our niece Susan and her husband Jay's home in eastern Kentucky (you may recall my blog posts from a year ago on their wedding).  We had a nice visit with them and their dogs (including one that just got its back broken after being hit by a car...seems like it is recovering, though).  Our next day's trip was a marathon 700+ mile drive back to Arkansas so the kids could get back to swim practice and I could return to work.  Along the way, we stopped again in Bardstown, Kentucky, to make a couple bourbon distillery visits:

Okay, so the picture above is of the visitor center for one of the distilleries, but we didn't have time for a full tour.  We arrived at home before dark, and everybody was happy to be home in their own beds!  We'll be around Monticello for a few weeks before epic summer journey #2 begins...