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Vicksburg and Getting To New Orleans

A lot of the land between Pine Bluff and New Orleans is flat.

It's really flat. Nearly all of it is scrubby, old forest that has been cleared for farming. There are farms all over it and water everywhere else. The roads turned from being twisty curvy things to being completely and totally straight.

The neighborhoods were amazingly poor, the ones that we drove by often had houses that had completely caved in, were missing glass or 

Vicksburg, Mississippi was the site of one of the big, final battles of the Civil War. The city was under siege for months, and the battleground is nearly all retained as a memorial. The park is enormous, with marble markers for nearly all the stages of the war, with markers from a great number of the states who were involved. Lots of the old battlements, trenches, and gun placements were all still in place, with markers for the states that people were from or the leaders of the divisions that were there. There's also one enormous dome erected by the State of Illinois for the hundred some infantry divisions along with the artillery, calvary and command groups that had all come as one for the battle.


It was a wonderful place to walk. The rain was intermittent, and it cooled us as we wandered and read all the various placards, memorials, and got to see all the thousands of names of the Illinois solders who were there. There were old houses, the gardens of the day, and the battlements all along. 

It was sobering. Especially with the fighting over in the Ukraine, thinking through how battles work on the ground given, it gives more meaning to the land they're fighting in. We got to sit in the Eurovan and eat our cheese and crackers lunch and breath the humid warm air.


The wetlands on the left were what was surrounding the land that held the actual Mississippi River on the right. I was amazed. There is so much water through this land. 


Driving over the wetlands through to Lake Pontchartrain on the bridges was amazing. And it was good to get back into the city again. We found our little place without any problems, and it has a great parking spot, and is within a walking block of a little market, where we found some dinner. We just ate in the apartment, enjoying what we'd found.

There are a lot of dentists nearby, and I'll try one out in the morning and hope that experience will give me some better assurance on my bite. The pain has definitely reduced. That's to the good, but I'd like to know that it's not going to come back when the steroids are done. 







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