amkean pronunciation

I used my first full Richmond day to go to museums. Indoor stuff. I went first to the National Park Service Tredegar site, where I had the place to myself. "Do you want to see the movie?" "Obv." That's exactly what I said, as far as you know. There's not a ton of great stuff at this site, but some good overview maps and videos.

Next to the NPS site is the American Civil War Center, a private museum. I paid the admission and spent maybe 15 minutes inside. There's a thematic unity to the museum, looking at the motivations of homeland, union, and freedom. There were videos that I didn't watch because I didn't want to take the time, and they seemed inauthentic. They weren't reenactment videos, just multicultural people standing around talking about Civil War issues. So it was kind of a flop, but the Quartermaster museum in Petersburg might want to consult with them about museum cohesion.

The exception to the indoor stuff was my morning visit to Hollywood Cemetery. Again, they were using the off season to do construction, but I was still able to see the graves of Jeb Stuart and Jeff Davis. Not to mention James Madison and John Tyler.

I went downtown to the Museum of the Confederacy, whose name makes it sound rednecky, but is actually one of the best Civil War museums around. It's engulfed by the VCU hospital complex, and there was much fanfare for the then Final Four-bound VCU basketball team while I was there. I parked in the hospital ramp and walked the wrong way so that I went around a superblock to get to the museum. It was there I realized I had forgotten my podcast in the car, but I figured out the short way back. I'm guessing the podcast is the same that you could rent at the museum, but it was informative and better than just looking and reading. I took the Confederate White House tour, which was okay. The tour guide was dynamic.

Labels: travel

The civil war sites in and around RIchmond were less crowded than the ones that were farther away from metropolitan areas. This seems to not make sense, but I think it's one of those things were if there's a tourist attraction in your own town, you know that you can visit it anytime you want, so you may never actually visit the place. The sites are really, really spread out as well.

I changed hotels in the trip south, and it was a bit of a downgrade. Still nowhere near "sketchy," but the Fredericksburg hotel was a really good deal. I really like hotels. I like being the boss of a place and feeling like it's a special night, and I can order out food and channel surf. One of my favorite hotel stays was when I got stranded by bad weather in White Plains, NY. I was forced to do nothing. Loved it. Watched "Joe Millionaire."

Upon first arriving in Richmond, I went to Cold Harbor battlefield. The earthworks there are awesome. As the ranger said, "we could use them today if we started fighting again, God forbid." The whole time I was there, I had Cold Harbor and the novel/movie Cold Mountain conflated in my mind. I've never read the book or seen the movie, but I was wondering how the book related to the battle and if it was worth reading from a historical standpoint. I took the absence of the book in the park bookstore to be a "no." However, because the two aren't related as far as I know, I have to withdraw that conclusion. In and around Cold Harbor are other battlefields from a different campaign, the Seven Days. Because I wasn't following that one, I didn't go to those sites. This caused me a little anxiety in that I was there, I didn't know when I would return, but I wasn't seeing these battlefields. I got over this by imagining that I could return someday.

I spent a few days in Richmond, and it was good planning to get Cold Harbor out of the way in that first evening as opposed to just going straight to the hotel.

Labels: travel

Luckily, my feeling of being alone at the national parks was ended when I drove up to Manassas. Not only were there plenty of cars in the visitor's center lot, but my tour seemed to be coinciding with a boys' lacrosse team outing. Although half of the team were wearing kepis and I wouldn't mind having them in class for a day to see what it's like when your kids value school, my estimation was that the trip to a historic site wasn’t decided by majority team vote. The chaperones/coaches asked questions, but the kids were just staring or starting to whisper on the tour that was the whole team and me.

I only spent a few hours in Manassas. I had finished my driving tour in the morning, and then did the podcast tour. I found the Manassas battlefield to require the most imagination, so I didn't stop at every point on the field. Also, there are modern busy roads going through the park unlike the park-only roads at other sites. From Manassas, I hustled to the Chancellorsville visitor's center, where I got the driving tour cd so I could get an early start the following morning.

This I did, and I was done with the Chancellorsville tour and back to the visitor's center before it opened. The young female park ranger who helped me the night before at Chancellorsville (who I had previously met at Fredericksburg that first day) told me that because it was the slow season, I could watch the video on demand the next day instead of having to follow the "every half hour schedule." The 40 year old male ranger the next morning did not offer the same deal, so after I entered the building at 9:03, I had to wait until 9:30 for the show. There was a countdown clock on the wall.

Every site has a video. Most sites have some sort of theater. It's clear the videos aren't produced centrally because they vary widely in content and tone. Some are like watching Ken Burns. Others feature re-enactors. Some are clearly outdated. James Earl Jones and Richard Dreyfuss were two recognizable narrators. One of the Appomattox videos has a clear positive spin, as in "everyone was now friends again" type of vibe. Sometimes the videos cost money, and some are free. Sometimes they're included in admission cost, although not every site charges. One exception to the video rule was Cold Harbor. No video there. That only might have been the smallest center I saw, though. The closed captioning wasn't working on one screen, which meant that I wasn't distracted by the words which I CANNOT HELP READING.

On to Richmond, and I did the Wilderness and Spotsylvania tours on the way, although at Spotsylvania, I encountered the other problem with off-season travel. They were doing a controlled burn in the park, so much of it was off-limits. They didn't mention this when I bought the driving tour, not that I expected them to, but it would have been nice. In many of the visitor centers, there was maintenance work going on. The interpretive labels were gone at Spotsylvania. I'm guessing all this will be done for the summer season.

Spotsylvania was the hardest site for me to imagine. I never really got my bearings, partly because I could only see a little section of the battlefield. There were lots of cars parked in one spot, the Bloody Angle, where you'd expect to see tourists, but all the cars were personnel. This was the story the entire trip. When I drove to Catharine Furnace on the Chancellorsville site, I saw another car parked there. Inevitably, this was a local runner. I could count on this happening with rare exceptions. It would be really good running at those parks.

Labels: travel

The way spring break was supposed to go was that I would get away from the extended winter here in Minny by traveling south, and by the time I returned, spring would have arrived. The temp wasn't too bad once I got back, but the first morning I woke up in Virginia, there was snow on the ground.

Concerned about the ability of Virginians to avoid running into my car with a bit of snow on the ground, I changed my plans for my first day and stuck around Fredericksburg. Off season park rangers are generally very happy to see you. I went to the park office first thing after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, and talked to the rangers a bit.

In the basement of the F'burg museum, there's a relic from a tent that Henry H. Sibley designed. I had never heard that the namesake for my high school and the first governor of Minnesota invented a widely used tent. This is because there were two Henry H. Sibleys in the same era, one Yank and one Reb. I took a picture of bizarro Sibley's grave marker.

I did more trip advisor research on my lodging for this trip compared to last year's trip. This meant sacrificing character for increased peace of mind that friends of the housekeeping staff wouldn't be hanging out in my room when I was gone. The Battlefield Inn has its charms, but sometimes predictability is okay.

The Fredericksburg podcast tour is excellent. It was the first one I listened to, and the best one. I did the driving tour of the battlefield as well, but the walking tour gives you the sense of the most famous part of the battle.

Much imagination is required for all these battlefields, because they don't look much like they once did. Parts are preserved pretty well, but I'm talking about the big picture. Unlike at Shiloh, there are people living there lives right there on the battlefield.

It was on my first day that I fortuitously went to the Chatham house (because it was on the driving tour; I might have skipped it otherwise) and found myself the only tourist there. I got a personal tour from the Milwaukeean ranger, who kindly provided me a list of Civil War sites I ought to see during the rest of my travels.

I quit the day early in order to get my veggie chili mac and watch basketball. I moved seats at the bar to get closer to the HDTV, and the one guy watching the game wanted an assurance that I wasn't cheering for Kansas vs. VCU before he decided if he was going to be hostile or not.

Labels: travel

Ran this one this afternoon.



After not having run since last Tuesday due to sinus congestion/sore throat, I had a lot of energy today. I wasn't going to run the south loop, but I felt good after 10 miles and didn't know I had run 10 miles, and continued. By the time I'd run 13, I was tired.

I've spent the past two days exploring Vicksburg and feel like I've accomplished something. I've been talking about coming here for so long, and it's gratifying to finally have made it happen. I'm going to Shiloh tomorrow which apparently involves mostly non-interstate travel, so it might take a while. On the plus side, I discovered that my rental has a USB port which might work with my iPod. I hadn't seen it in the dark.

Labels: civil war battlefields, travel, vicksburg