Vicksburg National Military Park to Tupelo, MS

Vicksburg, MS to Tupelo, MS today..Oct 4th...Had a lovely night in Vicksburg at the Days Inn..got up this am and went to the lobby to see what was up for breakfast...not..white toast and a few pastries...not working for us..so we went next door to the waffle house and we both had a great breakfast with real grits!  How do I know that? There were lumps and they were delicious!  We left and headed over to the Vicksburg National Military Park.. 

The park is incredible! We watched about a 20 min movie on the battle of Vicksburg..wow..the history there is something else!  We took the driving tour which was about 15 miles long and it took us more than a few hours! You could spend days seeing this park.  I love doing things like this, as you see so many other people there from so many other places just enjoying as we do..I'm stealing from my dear friend  Irene,,,"Now this is America!"  and I don't mean the fact that the Civil War was American upon American. It's the beauty of the National Park system! I can't explain the feeling it gives to see the history..

We left there knowing we had to drive to Tupelo, MS which was about 200 miles away and we wanted to take the Natchez Trace Parkway.  

Well, we made it so we can proudly say we have seen the 444 miles of the parkway from Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS!!!  It was beautiful, I told Ken, it's like driving through a park the whole way, and not alot of traffic.

We are at the Super 8 we stayed at last week here in Tupelo. Nice motel, and the gas station has a restaurant we had breakfast at last week...Dinner tonight!

Tomorrow we head to Don's, should be an easy drive..can't wait to see how his trees have turned. 

Inside the visitor center of Vicksburg Military Park

Outside the visitor center

The state of Illinois has an impressive memorial to the Civil War Soldiers..

Inside the Illinois Memorial

Looking up through the hole in the top of the memorial

Ken inside the memorial

The Illinois Memorial...Incredible!!

The best part of the park....THE SHIRLEY HOUSE!!
Only surviving structure in the park.  Headquarters for Illinois.
Members of the military built shelters around it to protect themselves

General Ulyssess S Grant

The USS Cairo...It was sunk in Dec 1862 and brought back up 1964..

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The Cairo

This was the ships bell..they found it and after all these years there was
an air pocket inside..so the Yazoo river was bubbling when it
was brought up...so cool! And the bell is beautiful!

Sailors silverware..doesn't compare to the officers silverware..

US Marine Corps dress cap insignia

The ship exhibit...incredible!

The paddle wheels

2and 1/2 inch steel plates with 12 to 25 inch wood behind
so it wouldn't shred apart when hit with artillery!

Side of the ship

13000 of 17000 Civil War soldiers are unknown.  Beautiful cemetary

More of the unknown

There are some WWI, WWII and Korea veterans buried here
They stopped burials in 1961 when they ran out of plots

Don, thought you would like this!

And of course the Arkansas memorial!

America is so beautiful, and so glad we are getting to see alot of it on this trip.