Connemara

We continued north to Flat Rock, North Carolina, and Connemara, also known as the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. The home and the surrounding property was purchased by the Pulitizer prize winning writer to accommodate his wife’s award winning goat dairy. When he died in 1967, she turned the house and grounds over to the park service, walking out with only a few personal items and her clothes.

At 9 am on the morning of the 7th, we walked up the steep trail to the house. The visitor center was in the basement of the house, and there we watched a interview of Sandburg by Edward R Murrow. 

After that we took what turned out to be a private tour of the house, and then walked out to the barn to see the goats. This was a hard Junior Ranger program for the kids, because in addition to answering some questions about the Sandburgs, they had to be artistic as well, creating a poem and guessing at the meanings of metaphors. It was pretty interesting, and we were there almost 3 hours.

Atlanta

Rain began to fall during the night, and by morning there was hard rain and thunderstorms. Since we were still getting accustomed to eastern time, we went to bed fairly late, and slept in. Once we were up and out of our campground, we stopped to do a little shopping. We then continued south, reaching the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield after lunch. Kennesaw was site of an 1864 battle in which a Confederate victory slowed, but didn't stop, Sherman's march to Atlanta.

The visitor center here was a little nicer than Horseshoe Bend's, but not as good as Chickamauga's. They didn't have an electronic map, and the layout of the roads around the battlefield did not lend themselves to a driving tour. We watched the film and walked through the exhibits, and the kids completed the Junior Ranger program. We then continued south to Atlanta, then headed east to Conyers, where we had found an RV dealer who could do some work on our RV. We stayed the night nearby.

With the sun now shining and our RV mostly repaired, we headed back into Atlanta to visit the MLK Jr National Historic Site. We looked over the exhibits in the visitor center, and went on a Ranger led tour of his birth home. It took about 2 hours to complete the Junior Ranger program, and then we headed northeast into South Carolina, stopping for the night near Greenville.

Chickamauga & Chattanooga

Our next stop was the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Fort Orglethorpe, Georgia. This area was the site of a series of Civil War battles, and was the nation's first Military Park, established in 1890. We first tried to visit the Tennessee portion, but discovered it was on the side of Lookout Mountain, and decided against trying to get our RV to it. We arrived at the Chickamauga Visitor Center in the late afternoon (we also lost an hour due to crossing into the Eastern time zone), and commenced working on the Junior Ranger program.

The visitor center at the Chickamauga Battlefield was very nice, except their multi-media presentation wasn't working. They had several very nice exhibits, including an electronic map that showed the movements of the two armies during the battle and a collection of Civil War era guns. To complete the Junior Ranger program, the kids had to look over the various exhibits to find the answers to several activities, plus drive the battlefield. It was nicely put together. A visitor could easily spend a full day checking out both battlesites.

Like Gettysburg, the Chickamauga Battlefield contains many monuments to the men who fought there. Above is the 85' Wilder Brigade monument. Chickamauga was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. We completed the Junior Ranger program just before 5 pm eastern, then headed south towards Atlanta, Georgia, stopping in the town of Calhoun for the night.

Horseshoe Bend & Russell Cave

Yesterday afternoon, we arrived at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, site of a famous battle in which Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Indians, and completed the Junior Ranger program there. It was a nice park. To complete the program, we had to watch the movie, explore the exhibits, and drive around the battlefield. We then continued north, stopping east of Birmingham for the night.

This morning we continued mostly north, zig-zagging from Alabama to Georgia to Tennessee, and back into Alabama again, on our way to Russell Cave National Monument. Every once in a while, our GPS system lets us down, and this was one of those times. We eventually made it to Russell Cave, but it took us in the back way, up and down the side of a mountain on a narrow, winding, badly paved road. Unlike other caves we've been to, Russell Cave is special not for it's geological features, but because of its archeology. It was lived in by native Americans off and on for over nine thousand years.

Like at Big Thicket, we had the visitor center all to ourselves, and even had a Ranger accompany us on a short walk to the entrance of the cave, pointing out plants and discussing local wildlife along the way. The visitor center was fairly small, and the kids were able to complete their Junior Ranger programs pretty quickly.

Gulf Islands & Tuskegee

We drove into Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to visit the Davis Bayou section of Gulf Islands National Seashore. The Mississippi section of the park fairly small - the section near Pensacola, Florida is much larger, and much of it is accessible only by boat. Unfortunately, we will not be going by Pensacola on this trip.  

As shown in the  picture above,  the Davis Bayou visitor center had been severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. A temporary visitor center had been set up, but it was closed due to President Ford's funeral. We had expected this, and I had hoped to get here on New Years Day, but we didn't make it. After leaving Ocean Springs, we turned northeast and drove through Alabama to Montgomery, where we stopped for the day. There were a lot more evergreen trees in southern Mississippi and Alabama than in southern Louisiana, although crossing over the Mobile river was similar to what we saw driving from Lafayette to New Orleans.

This morning we headed east out of Montgomery to the city of Tuskegee, Alabama, site of two National Historic Sites. The first one we visited was the Tuskegee Institute, a university started by Booker T Washington after the civil war to allow black men to get an education. Unfortunately, their Jr Ranger program had been suspended while it was being revamped, so we looked around the George Washington Carver Museum and then moved on. The second site was the Tuskegee Airmen NHS, which was established to honor the black pilots who were trained there and flew during WWII. Like the Tuskegee Institute, the Airmen site did not have a Jr Ranger program. It currently is housed in temporary trailers while a permanent visitor center is being built. They also plan to build a hanger to hold WWII planes like those flown by the Tuskegee Airmen. It should be a nice place to visit in a few years, but for now it's only worth about a half hour visit. We watched the video there and then headed north. The warm and sunny weather we had had for the last few days was gone, replaced by overcast skies and occasional winds.

Gulf Coast

We drove east on Hwy 90 from Gulfport to Biloxi in Mississippi. The devastation from Katrina was different here then in east New Orleans. In New Orleans, the buildings were damaged and abandoned, in coastal Mississippi the buildings were either severely damaged or completely torn down. Hope you don't need any gas.Or a place to stay. 

But you can go for a swim. At this house, only the pool remains.Just an address at what used to be a very pricey home. Often there was just a foundation and a sign where a restaurant or hotel was, or blocks of houses with a few newly rebuilt, some a complete wreck, and most torn down to the foundations. Many of the lots had "For Sale" signs, but a lot of construction was going on, and there were several advertisements for demolition, mold remediation, and repair.

Fireworks

We had been seeing fireworks stands since we entered New Mexico, and Louisiana was no exception. Evidently, they like to shoot fireworks off on New Years Eve in the southwest. It is as big an occasion as Fourth of July. We saw a lot of fireworks going off while we drove from New Orleans to Houma, and heard a lot as we were camped in Houma. On New Year's Day, we got up and did laundry, and then visited with a friend of Susan's. I had expected Houma to be a fairly small town surrounded by bayou wilderness, but it is actually quite developed, with many new stores and restaurants. Hwy 24 was developed from Hwy 90 all the way down to Houma, a distance of several miles. We left Houma in the late afternoon, heading east again.

We had seen cases of storm damage as we drove into New Orleans on Sunday, as well as between there and Houma, but it was minor compared to what we saw as we went east of downtown New Orleans. From I10, we saw several shopping centers, large apartment complexes, and even neighborhoods abandoned and in various states of devastation. A few houses had white trailers parked in driveways, which we assumed to be FEMA trailers. We passed Six Flags New Orleans, and while the coasters were standing, the entrance sign was severely damaged. We continued on into Mississippi, where the damage was much less evident. We stopped for the night in Gulfport.