What Have We Here?

So, it has come to this.

As you might know, it’s been the plan for a couple of years to
celebrate my girlfriend Amanda’s completion of a Masters in History by
taking a long vacation, and the time is almost upon us.  The thing is,
we’re both huge history geeks, and instead of doing something normal,
we’ve decided to go on a Civil War Battlefield Road Trip.

Having crossed the country on a roadtrip in 2007, I figured that I
would want to document everything as I went, and I’m a bit more
comfortable with the idea of blogging now than I was then.  I’ve kept
a seldom-updated blog for a couple of years now, and figured that
instead of trying to tack onto that, I’d strike out fresh.  So, it has
come to this.

I’ll be updating as regularly as I can along the route as time and
internet access allow, though I wanted to get the ball rolling early.
At present, the plan is to take two weeks to head from Massachusetts
down to Gettysburg, then across Maryland and Northern Virginia
(hitting up Antietam and 1st and 2nd Bull Run, Chancellorsville,
Fredericksburg, and the Wilderness), before heading south in earnest.

From the DC area, we’ll head to Virginia Beach to see Hampton Roads,
then head through North Carolina to see some friends at Camp LeJeune
in Jacksonville.  Not a lot happened in North Carolina during the war,
though so we’ll move on to South Carolina, Charleston, and Fort Sumter
before turning west through Atlanta, Andersonville, and the northern
nothingness of Alabama and Mississippi to get to Vicksburg.  From
there we head along the river to Memphis, then across Tennessee to
Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville before turning back north.
Incidentally, Appomattox Court House will be our last stop, which is a
nice touch.

So, yeah.  We’ll be taking a lot of pictures, and reading a lot of
books.  We already have James MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom lined
up, and are trying to procure Michael Sharraa’s The Killer Angels on
audiobook for the 8-hour trip to Gettysburg.  We’ll be doing a fair
amount of camping on or close to battlefields, and I plan on having a
blue Federal kepi to wear around the south as well ;)

I don’t know ho much updating I’ll do before the trip itself at the
end of July, but check back here once we get going for posts,
pictures, and commentary.  Should be a lot of fun!

-M