Vicksburg

We took a day trip to Vicksburg Mississippi on Saturday. We had a great time, here are a few highlights from the trip.

The Vicksburg National Cemetery

Nearly 17,000 Union soldiers are buried here, making it the largest internment of Civil War dead in the nation. Since it was memorial day they had put a flag by each grave, it was quite a sight.

The U.S.S. Cairo

This is a gunboat from the civil war. It had thirteen cannons and was iron clad. This ship was sunk just outside of Vicksburg. It was the first ship in history to be sunk by an electronically detonated torpedo. In the 1970's they raised it from the bottom of the Mississippi and it as well as a museum of different artifacts are at the Vicksburg National Military Park.

Here the kids are 1)inspecting the cannons 2) in front of the Illinois Monument 3) in front of a tank

The Monuments

The Wisconsin Monument~ ~The Mississippi Monument

The Illinois Monument

There was a 16 mile driving tour that had stops to help understand how the battle and siege happened. Along the path were numerous monument. Some memorialized specific men or regiments. Each state also had a monument, which remembered those from their state who were part of the Vicksburg battles. The biggest was the Illinois monument which had names around the inside of the building. The words on the Wisconsin one are nice if you zoom in.

The Mighty Mississippi

Since, we live in Mississippi we figured we should probably see Old Man river himself, so we did. We drove across into Louisiana and back. As you have probably heard in the news it is way over its banks. We saw evidence of this, after we got off the "bridge" we still had water on both sides of the road for a mile or more. If you zoom in on the last picture you can see the evidence.