Summer Road Trip, Day 2: Vicksburg

Sunday morning we were dressed and ready for church plenty early, so we decided to take a drive around Vicksburg before worship. We scouted out a beautiful Civil War cemetery and located the national military park for later. As we were driving through some low-income areas of Vicksburg, I noted how many pit bulls people in the area owned. Soon, we were making a U-turn on a dead end road and we saw a fluffy poodle mix running toward the car. Jamie cried out, "Drew! Pit bull!" We didn't let her live that one down.

Worship was uplifting and the people at Bypass Church of Christ were welcoming and so sweet! We’re pretty sure we met everyone in the building. After church we grabbed a quick lunch, changed and went to the Vicksburg National Military Park. We arrived in time for a cannon demonstration, in which high school volunteers in uniform fired a 12-lb. "Napoleon."

We scheduled a two-hour driving tour, and an older gentleman rode along in our car and told us fascinating Civil War history and stories as we drove through the park and viewed the memorials and battle markers. The tour was the perfect way to enjoy the park and educate ourselves about the importance of Vicksburg 150 years ago, with the added bonus of Audrey’s two-hour car nap and Noah’s ability to watch a DVD when he got a little bored.

The national park cleared some of the battlefields of trees so you can visualize what they looked like during the Civil War. In the background is the Illinois monument.

The Shirley House is the only wartime structure remaining inside Vicksburg National Military Park

The Illinois Monument, which has 47 steps, one for every day Vicksburg was under siege

Our driving tour :)

The National Cemetery is the burial site of 18,244 Union soldiers, more than any other national cemetery. Only 5,290 of the soldiers are identified. (Every single picture I took of the graves turned out with the sun halo or sunbeams. Weird.)

"Though intended for Union war dead only, in the late 1860s two Confederates were mistakenly buried in Section B of the cemetery (Private Reuben White, 19th Texas Infantry; Sergeant Charles B. Brantley, 12th Arkansas Sharpshooters Battalion)" (www.nps.gov). Last year, for the sesquicentennial, flags were placed on all the tombstones, but these two displayed Confederate flags.

You can see the tunnel at the bottom of this hill, the site of Thayer's Approach.

For dinner we went to a Mexican place right next to our hotel called El Sombrero. The food was affordable and delicious, despite the horrible waiter assigned to our table. After dinner we drove over by the Ameristar Casino for the magnificent view of the bridge over the Mississippi. Back at the hotel, the kids finally got to swim in the indoor/outdoor pool before bed.