On Thursday, we went on a swamp tour. I forgot my camera!! Sad thing, too, because there were a lot of great photo ops. I think Doug's dad got some good ones so maybe he'll let me borrow them to post on here sometime. We saw several alligators, including a few who came right up to the boat and let us see them for quite awhile. We also saw a snake, lots of turtles, and several birds. The most eventful thing about it was that we got caught in a thunderstorm and it was pretty scary. The weather forecast had said only light rain in the morning, so they didn't cancel the tour - but once we got to the furthest point, it started downpouring and thundering/lightning. For awhile, we just moved close to the shore so we wouldn't be on open water, and tried to wait it out. When the guide realized it was going to go on for awhile, we slowly made our way upstream, hugging the shoreline the entire way. There were several times that the lightning was very close and I was nervous because being the biggest thing on the water isn't exactly what you want in a storm. I also got nervous hugging the shore because I kept thinking about lightning hitting a tree and toppling it on us! That has actually happened a couple of times since we lived here (not on the river, but people on roads being killed when a tree fell on them). Finally, we made it back safely, and the guide said, "Man, I didn't want to tell you all, but I was really scared back there!". I could tell that he was, and that made me scared! But we made it back safely and in the end it was a very good swamp tour! If you want to see the swamp where we were, check out Sheryl Crow's video "Love is Free"...it was filmed there!
After the swamp tour we had lunch and then thought we'd try out Fort Pike - but when we got there it was still raining and almost everything there is outside, so we came back home and rented movies! It rained like crazy that day, clear into the night!!
Friday we got up and headed to Vicksburg, Mississippi. What a pretty town! It's the home of the Battle of Vicksburg, one of the most famous Civil War battles. It really was quite an interesting thing to see. I've posted some pictures below. After Vicksburg, we drove to Baton Rouge to spend the night, as Doug had a presentation he had to give there the next morning.
Yesterday (Saturday) we drove back from Baton Rouge and then had the missionaries for dinner. Some of us stopped to go antiquing in Ponchatoula.
For the rest of the time they are here, we have some fun things planned - I will try to remember to take my camera this time!!
All the states that were involved in the battle of Vicksburg have erected monuments around the park. In total, there are more than 1300 monuments in the park! Some states put just one monument, others put a monument wherever they had a regiment that was camped there. This is the Louisiana monument.
Girls standing in front of some of the barricades.
Morgan and Elise ducking from the cannon fire (sorry, I didn't get the cannon in the picture so you can see that!)
Illinois monument. This was one of the neatest monuments, modeled after the Parthenon. Inside are the names of each of the over 36,000 men from Illinois who fought in the battle. Very neat.
Tunnel 
In front of the Cairo, which was sunk in the battle and then raised from the river and somewhat restored.
1 comment:
Gosh, it's probably been 10 years since I've been to Vicksburg, it is a beautiful park and lots of wonderful, rich history! Glad you have finally gone to see it.
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