Out and about

We Crazies are out and about, seeing the world. DH and I are off this week, so we piled Curly and Moe in the car and headed to the hills. (Larry is home manning the fort.) And where are all the Crazies? Why, in Cleveland. Not in Ohio, silly. We're in Tennessee.

We're taking a vacation on the cheap. DH got us rooms with his hotels points, so we don't have to pay much. We had supper at a pizza chain. And what are we doing? Seeing parks and battlefields!

Today we spent the afternoon at the Chickamauga Battlefield, part of the National Parks system. The battlefield is huge, There were tons of cannons and rifles on view.  The visitors center has a huge collection of rifles, which Moe thought was the coolest thing ever.  (It's called the Fuller Gun Collection, some 355 long guns.)  

DH had a great time looking at all the cannon and monuments. 

The park is huge - 5500 acres, with a zillion monuments.  There are ones for each state that fought, plus each regiment and division, plus markers for the lines and each part of the battle, the headquarters, and where leaders were killed.

This is the marker for the Georgia soldiers, the tallest state marker in the park.  Moe is the orange dot, heading out to take a better picture.  BTW - it was pretty steamy today.

This is the Wilder Brigade Monument, named for Union troups.  It's ginormous at 85 feet tall.

Moe decided to go up the Wilder Monument.  He went through this nifty door,

up these stairs that went round and round and round,

then out to the top, where I took a picture of him.  Really, he's there.  Look hard.

Then he came down and got the camera and went right back up again.  And took this picture of me.  (I had NO interest in going up the tower even once, much less twice.)

It's an amazing place.  This is the site of the last major victory for the Confederate in the American Civil War, in September of 1863.  More than thirty-four thousand men were killed, wounded, or missing in this the battle, and supposedly the creek ran red with blood for two days afterwards.  DH is a battle buff - and not just Civil War battles.  He visits any kind of battlefield or historical place whenever he travels.  I'm not so into the battles, but I love genealogy and I have a ton of Confederate soldiers in my ancestry, so the Civil War sites have some interest for me.

I brought some tatting to do while we are at the hotel.  This is a variation on Jane's Winsome Drops, using DMC Metallic thread in light silver, size 15 Miyuki seed beads, and the center beads are some I got from Fox.  I think these will be pretty.  The thread is touchy to work with, but it looks great in the end.

Some other fun - DH and I celebrated 24 years of marriage yesterday. Hard to believe. And I still haven't smothered him with a pillow yet.

Tomorrow - into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park!