Day 8, Friday August 8th, 2008--> Vicksburg MS and the long ride home...

(edited...)

well, damn, vacation is over. were back home, got in at about 1030 last night. exhausted.

here is our last day of vacation went.

we got up early, ate breakfast, got the truck packed and headed out.

We took a 45 minute drive to Vicksburg MS to experience the Civil War Museum, Battlefield and Memorials. Fortunately most of it was a driving tour. We took a 3 hour tour through the National Military Park aided by a GPS driven video player that told us about pretty much everything we needed to know about the Vicksburg Campaign in the Civil War.

We saw tons of monuments and statues and plaques. Learned a lot about what happened there, from both sides perspective. Learned a lot about the Civil War.

If you are in anyway interested in the Civil War, i think Vicksburg is worth the trip. Goood times.

This is the Illinois Monument. Illinois sent more soldiers to this campaign than any other state. It was a very very cool monument.


Here is the Missouri Monument. Quite a few regiments from Missouri fought in this campaign, for BOTH sides of the battle. Interesting, this Monument honors soldiers of both sides.


Here are some of the cool memorials put up by the state of Ohio. Of them all, Ohio's many monuments were the coolest.

We also got to check out the USS Cairo, one of 7 US iron clad gunboats that fought in the Civil War. There was a small museum and you could go inside part of it.


The last part of the tour was the National Cemetary. Most of the graves (the short square markers) were for unidentified soldiers. Most of the dead from the Civil War were never identified. That is sad to me.



Then we started the trip home. We left Vicksburg at about 1pm, got some lunch back in Jackson then made the tedious and long journey home. It took forever, we had to stop several times for gas (fortunately gas prices down south were pretty good and my truck, recently tuned up, was getting between 18-19 MPG, woot woot!) We ate some french fries and cherry pies (in disguise, guys!!!) in Cape Gireardeau.

So vacation is over, I have to go back to work on Monday and Amanda has to go back tomorrow.... boo hoo... it was a great time, loved it all, cant wait to go on vacation again!

thanks for watching!
as always, see all our pics from Vicksburg over at our Picasa Gallery!