We spent another night in a Flying J parking lot on I-81 outside Wytheville, VA. It's still amazing how many trucks are on the highways. Most everything that moves in the USA moves by truck and these guys deserve a lot of credit for a very tough and demanding job. Today we decided to take advantage of retirement and no summer job commitment and changed our travel plans to include some of the history of the US. As long as we were in Virginia, we decided to visit some historic Civil War sites We saw a sign on the highway to a visitors center in Appomattox, so we exited I-81 and followed the sign until they led us downtown to very narrow streets we couldn't get the 5th wheel through so we headed to what else - a Wal Mart we'd seen from the highway. Turns out it was brand new and not even open yet but I talked to the store manager and he agreed to let us leave the 5th wheel in the parking lot for a few hours while we went sightseeing. At the visitors center, we got information on a self-guided walking tour of the downtown area. We walked around taking in the sights, seeing the old buildings and ended up at the court house only to find, the site of the original Appomattox Court House is several miles outside of the town of Appomattox. A very nice lady gave us a tour of the downtown building and then told us how to find the 'Real Thing'. We drove out to the Appomattox National Park where many original buildings and some reconstructions are located. It was kind of eerie to visit the place where General Ulysses S. Grant (Commander of the Union Army) and Lt General Robert E. Lee (Commander of the Confederate Army) signed the treaty (April 9, 1865) ending the 4 yr old, bitter and brutal war between the North and South. This was a dark time in American history. I even have a great-great uncle who, while home on leave in Wisconsin, committed suicide because he could not bear to return to the horrors he'd seen while serving with the Union Army.
It's quite breathtaking to stand on the very ground where so many brave Americans on both sides fought to preserve what they believed in. We had a very interesting tour of the grounds run by the US Park Service. We were able to get in free because a couple years ago, in Colorado, we bought an "America the Beautiful" Senior Lifetime Pass. In the cemetery pictured to the right are buried 19 young men, 18 Confederate and 1 Union soldier who died the last 2 days of the war. One Confederate soldier enlisted 3 days after the shelling of Ft Sumter( April 12, 1861) which started the war and made it through 1455 days of war only to die on April 8, 1865, one day before the peace treaty was signed. You get a strange feeling looking out over the vast fields where so many brave souls fought and died. It was getting late and we'd heard some reports of a possible severe thunderstorm moving in our direction, with possible high winds, so we decided to call it a day, retrieve the 5th wheel and find a place for the night. Just as we were getting hooked up at WalMart, the sky turned very black and the clouds that were forming didn't look good at all. We could just vision that funnel coming out of those black clouds and getting us. We looked at the map but none of the roads out of here looked like major roadways and the storm was forming way too fast, so we called a campgrounds we had passed on the way back to Wally World and they had one spot left so we took it. Before we could get to the campgrounds, the sky let loose with a downpour, thunder, and lightning. We pulled into the campgrounds and found our spot. Thankfully it was a pull-threw. We sat in the truck until it let up a little and Judy made a run for the camper while I finished up in the truck. The storm passed as fast as it appeared and the rain had let up enough that I put on my raincoat and hooked up the power and water. We'll worry about the sewer in the AM. So here we are for the night but it was a enjoyable and memorable day but very strange standing on the very spot where some of our Country's most important history was made.
We spent another night in a Flying J parking lot on I-81 outside Wytheville, VA. It's still amazing how many trucks are on the highways. Most everything that moves in the USA moves by truck and these guys deserve a lot of credit for a very tough and demanding job. Today we decided to take advantage of retirement and no summer job commitment and changed our travel plans to include some of the history of the US. As long as we were in Virginia, we decided to visit some historic Civil War sites We saw a sign on the highway to a visitors center in Appomattox, so we exited I-81 and followed the sign until they led us downtown to very narrow streets we couldn't get the 5th wheel through so we headed to what else - a Wal Mart we'd seen from the highway. Turns out it was brand new and not even open yet but I talked to the store manager and he agreed to let us leave the 5th wheel in the parking lot for a few hours while we went sightseeing. At the visitors center, we got information on a self-guided walking tour of the downtown area. We walked around taking in the sights, seeing the old buildings and ended up at the court house only to find, the site of the original Appomattox Court House is several miles outside of the town of Appomattox. A very nice lady gave us a tour of the downtown building and then told us how to find the 'Real Thing'. We drove out to the Appomattox National Park where many original buildings and some reconstructions are located. It was kind of eerie to visit the place where General Ulysses S. Grant (Commander of the Union Army) and Lt General Robert E. Lee (Commander of the Confederate Army) signed the treaty (April 9, 1865) ending the 4 yr old, bitter and brutal war between the North and South. This was a dark time in American history. I even have a great-great uncle who, while home on leave in Wisconsin, committed suicide because he could not bear to return to the horrors he'd seen while serving with the Union Army.
It's quite breathtaking to stand on the very ground where so many brave Americans on both sides fought to preserve what they believed in. We had a very interesting tour of the grounds run by the US Park Service. We were able to get in free because a couple years ago, in Colorado, we bought an "America the Beautiful" Senior Lifetime Pass. In the cemetery pictured to the right are buried 19 young men, 18 Confederate and 1 Union soldier who died the last 2 days of the war. One Confederate soldier enlisted 3 days after the shelling of Ft Sumter( April 12, 1861) which started the war and made it through 1455 days of war only to die on April 8, 1865, one day before the peace treaty was signed. You get a strange feeling looking out over the vast fields where so many brave souls fought and died. It was getting late and we'd heard some reports of a possible severe thunderstorm moving in our direction, with possible high winds, so we decided to call it a day, retrieve the 5th wheel and find a place for the night. Just as we were getting hooked up at WalMart, the sky turned very black and the clouds that were forming didn't look good at all. We could just vision that funnel coming out of those black clouds and getting us. We looked at the map but none of the roads out of here looked like major roadways and the storm was forming way too fast, so we called a campgrounds we had passed on the way back to Wally World and they had one spot left so we took it. Before we could get to the campgrounds, the sky let loose with a downpour, thunder, and lightning. We pulled into the campgrounds and found our spot. Thankfully it was a pull-threw. We sat in the truck until it let up a little and Judy made a run for the camper while I finished up in the truck. The storm passed as fast as it appeared and the rain had let up enough that I put on my raincoat and hooked up the power and water. We'll worry about the sewer in the AM. So here we are for the night but it was a enjoyable and memorable day but very strange standing on the very spot where some of our Country's most important history was made.
1 comment:
The side show is looking very good, Thanks. Dave
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