Happy 4th of July!

Nothing like starting off the 4th of July with a bit of a BANG!!!

When we last left y'all, we were in the midst of the 2011 Arkansas Archeological Society's summer dig... The rest of the week, we continued digging, and continued to find neat things like this 1830s vintage silver US dime:

Here's an interesting picture--the orangish color object is a brick--what is the white thing above it? (Hint: it's upside down...)

It is the ceramic, painted head of a toy doll! Like many (most) archeological digs, some of the neatest items turn up at the very end, and this dig at Historic Washington was no different (the dime and doll's head were found on the last full day of the dig). We thoroughly enjoyed this year's dig, heat and all, and look forward to next year's excavations. Earlier this spring, Kenny was given a cabbage to plant, and though it didn't fare well in the heat and dryness we had, it did produce a decent little head that was pretty tasty chopped up into a cole slaw:

Below, Beth takes advantage of a relatively cool and shady morning in our backyard to do some reading:

Today (the 4th of July) we decided to venture south to Vicksburg, Mississippi to visit the national battlefield there. On the way, we went along a large area that was threatened by flooding earlier this summer. One of the ways they addressed the risk of flood to the power infrastructure was to build sandbag barriers around electrical utility boxes on the ground:

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Vicksburg, it was the last Confederate strong point on the Mississippi River to fall to the Union during the Civil War. Vicksburg, after a two month siege, surrendered on July 4, 1863--a major Union victory, but one overshadowed largely by the bigger, bloodier battle going on at the same time--Gettysburg. Below, two Union cannon face a Confederate fort along the Vicksburg line:

Below, a park ranger in a period Union uniform describes the loading procedures behind a 12-pound Napolean gun, like the pieces in the picture above:

The other reenactors in this group were volunteers, and look like a number of local teenage boys:

Kenny's the family's Civil War buff, but he has always been "gun shy" (doesn't like the loud booms or bangs of cannons/guns). This demonstration was no different, as Kenny hid out and covered his ears well in advance:

The demonstration went off without a hitch, once the joggers and bikers had cleared the downrange area... We also spent some time looking at the remains of a Union ironclad gunboat which had sunk after striking a mine in a nearby river:

We also took a drive through the national cemetery associated with the battlefield. In this large graveyard are over 16,000 graves of men that fell in this battle, over 75% which are "unknown":

Below is an inscription on the Arkansas memorial at Vicksburg, erected years after the battle:

We left the battlefield on a somber note in late morning, and headed back towards Monticello. We stopped at Lake Providence, Louisiana, where General Ulysses Grant of the Union had attempted to dig a long canal to bypass Vicksburg. There were a few picnic tables in a shady grove of baldcypress, and a long pier that went into the oxbow lake. I took this picture of a soft shell turtle swimming in the greenish water of the lake:

Stephen enjoyed walking around on the pier, and was braver about the many spiderwebs on the pier than his siblings:

Now, as we're sitting around at home before supper, the thunderheads are rolling in, so we may not get any fireworks today, but that's OK by me--an early bedtime would be just fine!!