The great 2016 road trip, part 3
Sep. 3rd, 2020 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellThe SO has a degree in history, with a particular interest in modern warfare. "Modern", in military history, is generally accepted to begin in the 1850s or 1860s. This should explain why Vicksburg was on our list of attractions for this trip...
Day 5: After restocking our snacks at the grocery store next door to the night's hotel, we headed up the road to Vicksburg National Military Park. This is a large enough site that it is toured by driving around from point of interest to point of interest, very slowly, so you can read all the memorials.
Holy crap there are a lot of memorials. Every state, county, city, or prominent family that had anyone in the battle of Vicksburg has commissioned a big chunk of stone to be inscribed with names and placed along the road somewhere. The official Web site says there are 1400 memorials total, and I believe it.
The highlight of the visit for me was seeing the remains of the USS Cairo (pronounced KAY-ro). We saved that for last, and after that it was well past 1pm, and we actually had somewhere specific to be that evening, so back on the road we go.
From I-20, we finally split off at US 49, down to I-10, to Mobile, to see a friend of the SO's. We had dinner together at some sort of large, steakhousey restaurant whose name I forget.
Day 6: There was nothing that looked good for a solid breakfast right around the hotel we'd wound up at, so we headed east on I-10 and did not wind up stopping until around 9 at a Cracker Barrel along the way.
There are people who don't strictly need breakfast, and just have it as a nod to popular convention. The SO is one of those people. I am not. So I was still grumpy and out of sorts even afterward as we crossed Mobile Bay, which is a shame because that was a seriously impressive site.
We traversed the Florida panhandle and then turned further south and east at I-75. The main bulk of Florida is very, very flat, but with a deep green to all the grass that tells you you're definitely not in Iowa. It's more like driving down the middle of a huge, untidy lawn.
We crossed over to Orlando on the turnpike (state route 91). We picked up burgers at a fast-food island in the middle of the expressway, and probably should have eaten them then, so that we would have maybe not had so much trouble dealing with a malfunctioning automated tollbooth shortly afterward. But it got sorted out, and so as evening fell, we at last pulled in at our hotel in Orlando, just a couple blocks outside Disney World.
Next time: Visiting the Mouse
Day 5: After restocking our snacks at the grocery store next door to the night's hotel, we headed up the road to Vicksburg National Military Park. This is a large enough site that it is toured by driving around from point of interest to point of interest, very slowly, so you can read all the memorials.
Holy crap there are a lot of memorials. Every state, county, city, or prominent family that had anyone in the battle of Vicksburg has commissioned a big chunk of stone to be inscribed with names and placed along the road somewhere. The official Web site says there are 1400 memorials total, and I believe it.
The highlight of the visit for me was seeing the remains of the USS Cairo (pronounced KAY-ro). We saved that for last, and after that it was well past 1pm, and we actually had somewhere specific to be that evening, so back on the road we go.
From I-20, we finally split off at US 49, down to I-10, to Mobile, to see a friend of the SO's. We had dinner together at some sort of large, steakhousey restaurant whose name I forget.
Day 6: There was nothing that looked good for a solid breakfast right around the hotel we'd wound up at, so we headed east on I-10 and did not wind up stopping until around 9 at a Cracker Barrel along the way.
There are people who don't strictly need breakfast, and just have it as a nod to popular convention. The SO is one of those people. I am not. So I was still grumpy and out of sorts even afterward as we crossed Mobile Bay, which is a shame because that was a seriously impressive site.
We traversed the Florida panhandle and then turned further south and east at I-75. The main bulk of Florida is very, very flat, but with a deep green to all the grass that tells you you're definitely not in Iowa. It's more like driving down the middle of a huge, untidy lawn.
We crossed over to Orlando on the turnpike (state route 91). We picked up burgers at a fast-food island in the middle of the expressway, and probably should have eaten them then, so that we would have maybe not had so much trouble dealing with a malfunctioning automated tollbooth shortly afterward. But it got sorted out, and so as evening fell, we at last pulled in at our hotel in Orlando, just a couple blocks outside Disney World.
Next time: Visiting the Mouse
