Vicksburg

Okay, 5 months later I'm finally writing about my trip to Vicksburg. My partner, Royd, and I went there for some coastal modeling trianing. It was interesting to be on the other side of the training. Usually I am the one doing the training. I haven't been back to Vicksburg for many years. You see, the happening town of Vicksburg is home to the Waterways Experiment Station. The folks here have been quite instrumental in the development of the our software. It was good to see some of my good friends like Cary and Rob. I was able to run the streets of Vicksburg each morning. That was pretty fun (and interesting). Vicksburg, for those Civil War buffs, is the site of one of the great, final, battles. I usually ran along the street that had all of the markets showing the location of the battle lines.

One afternoon, Royd and I had some free time so we decided to go to the Vicksburg National Military Park. For all of the times that I have traveled there, I'm surprised that I've never taken the time to visit this park. It was very interesting. Here is a picture of the Illinois state memorial



There are several state memorials scattered throughout the park.









There are also fields upon fields of graves. Most of these are fallen Confederate soldiers. It is all pretty amazing.















Another cool thing we saw was the restored USS Cairo Gunboat. This was one of 7 ironclad gunboats that was used during the Civil War. The boat was sunk in about 36 feet of water and there it remained until about 40 years ago when it was recovered and the restoration began. Most of the ship is now on display. It was interesting.