Petersburg National Battlefield

Grant has a very strong interest in battlefields and anything concerning military events and equipment so this will be an underlying theme of many of the posts while he is traveling with us.

We chose to visit the Eastern Front Battlefield visitor's center and the fortifications around that area.  The Union Army tried to assault the Confederate capital of Richmond and failed in each attempt at capturing the city.  Petersburg, VA was south of Richmond and was a railroad and highway hub from the south leading into Richmond.  It was decided to attack Petersburg and cut off the critical supplies needed in Richmond.  It took the North almost 10 months to accomplish this with huge casualities on both sides.  There is too much history about the battle here for me to go into, so I won't try to detail the events.  Suffice to say that after 10 months Gen'l R E Lee retreated from Richmond on April 1, 1865 and surrendered at Appomattox a week later.

Grant checking his cannons.

All ready to do battle.

Very nice field artillery piece.

It was a very hot and humid day, however Grant checked out a number of the gun emplacements and we toured by car the rest of this park.  If you are ever in the Petersburg, VA area and have an interest in the Civil War, then this should be on your bucket list.

After seeing all the sights we stopped by a Five Guys hamburger place for lunch.  It wasn't one of the best Five Guys places we have visited.  The hamburgers were burnt to a crisp and greasy, however the French Fries were good.  We did appreciate the refills on our drinks and took advantage of that.

After lunch we drove over to visit with our good friends Carolyn & Mann at their home.  We first met them at Long Key SP in the Florida Keys in 2000 when they pulled in next to us.  Mann invited us over for "Happy Hour" and we hit it off with them from the beginning.  We have camped with them a number of times over the years in the Keys and other places including one year when they spent a month in Tucson.  

We chatted non stop catching up on events and plans.  Carolyn even made me move from the couch to "her" chair.  I thought that was considerate, but found out that she wanted to be closer to Gerry so they could carry on their own conversation.  Mann and I spent most of the time talking about RVs and computers.  

Carolyn prepared a meat lasagna and also a vegetable lasagna for dinner.  Mann is trying the Vegan diet and after 6 weeks and swears by it.  I tried a little of the vegetable lasagna and thought it was quite tasty, but preferred the meat one.

It was getting late by then and past Grant's bedtime so we drove back to the campground.  That turned out to be a little adventure also since the road back had a bridge out and was closed down.  Backtracking was the order of the night and thankfully we knew the area fairly well and managed to make a long detour down two lane roads to get back.  Once we got close to the park the oncoming lane of the narrow road was non stop traffic.  We arrived back at the park just after the concert here in the park was over.  It was an outside concert and a heavy rain shower had passed through during the event and everyone was soaked.  At least there wasn't any lightening that I heard about.

That was our day, how was yours?