Battlefield Education

The kids requested Civil war battlefields on this trip. Now I am a lover of history, but wars make me squeamish, and the Civil War even more so than most. Most of my sketchy knowledge of it, comes from movies, and maybe a documentary. I hated that in school they expected us to remember battle names, the amounts of dead and so on. Who wants a statistic? I want to know who the people were behind the battles. Of course in the movies, those people die. Which is what happened.

In any case though, I abandoned my hopes of seeing the Chattanooga Choochoo, and instead we drove out to Lookout Mountain in Tennessee to check out the Battle of Chattanooga...

To get to Lookout Mt, you drive out of Chattanooga and up a little
tiny, narrow, winding switchbacky road. People live up there in
huge houses. I would have taken pictures except I was driving.
When you get to the top, you find this. A dramatic entrance to a turning
point battlefield.

There is a little shop and museum located out of the park.

And lots of little signs talking about all the statistic.

I was more interested in the gorgeous views..

They were not interested in having their picture taken.

Looking back over the monuments, and the top of the hill.

Ooh! Flowers!

A monument

But again, look at that view!

I do like this though, imagine them hauling these cannons up here
and siting them over the valley.

But again, look at how pretty!

This place is steep, I honestly don't know how they made it up here at all.
Of course, many didn't, and those who did suffered so much.

Inside, there is a mural of the battlefield.

Afterwards we drove to the Chickamauga battlefield.

Where Cory attempted to kill Devin. Or so it seems like in this photo anyway.

I didn't take nearly as many photos at Chickamauga, but their museum there was awesome. We unfortunately were all getting hungry, and rushed through it toward the end. It focused a lot on the suffering of the Civil War, and the entire South afterwards. Then we drove through the battlefield past all the monuments. I wish we had spent more time overall there. Visiting both though, made for a well rounded day. We saw a pivotal battle for the north, and one the south won, plus two dramatically different battlesites.

This photo was interesting as it showed them getting things up
to Lookout Mt. It still boggles the mind.

Some of the battlefields.

Each monument is for a troop that fought.

I still slightly regret though not getting to see the Chattanooga Choochoo...