We started day two at the Petersburg National Battlefield. It was supposed to be a quick stop. It turned into nearly 2 hours of walking, a movie, and some really cool stuff.
We arrived around eight thirty and started walking the battlefields near the visitor center. When we were kids we went to battlefields all the time. The coolest part of this one was how they "showed" the troops advancing. They used grass. Unmowed grass. And as you walked the two patches of grass came closer together. Great visual. One teen called dibs on the Union and the other, by default, the Confederacy. They followed the grass lines and walked toward each other.
The girls were obsessed with cannons. The path took us into the woods and into the land of a zillion mosquitos. None of us had repellant on yet. Angel and my niece were really eaten alive. there we saw the cannon called the "Dictator". It launch 200 pound shells that traveled as much as 2.5 miles.
As we came up the hill the park ranger was raising the flag. A clear sign that the visitor center was opening. They started the movie right away for us. And the AC was on ice-box setting... a welcome relief after spending almost an hour walking in the humidity.
Afterwards we took the driving tour and walked a lot around two key battle areas, including the "crater". (Not pictured.) As we trekked down to the crater following the line of the tunnel we expected to see a big hole. This was a huge explosion -- 800 pounds of explosives. But the crater is no longer a crater. Mother Nature and erosion had filled it mostly in.
The rest of the day was spent taking diversions to places that were not open Mondays. All and all, we barely covered one state today.
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