Vicksburg

Last week I spent a night in Mobile AL.  The downtown is an interesting mix of old and new architecture.  Some of it looks like New Orleans, while a neo-Chrysler building rises in the background.

I moved on to Vicksburg, where I stayed in a fine B&B.  This is the interior of my room, officially Aunt Pittypat's Suite.

The suite was in the carriage house of the Cedar Grove mansion.  It was verrry pleasant to sit on the veranda with a drink and listen to the birds put on a symphony all day.  Weather was perfect...80 degrees and low humidity.  Elegant.

Here the Lizards are getting accustomed to the genteel Southern lifestyle.

Now I'm on the Vicksburg National Battlefield.  The Union victory in the siege of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 cut the Confederacy in two, secured the entire Mississippi River for Union shipping, and was one of the turning points of the war along with the battle of Gettysburg, which occurred in the same week.  By the early 1900s a move to make the battlefield a memorial was underway and states began building memorials to their soldiers who had fought at Vicksburg. Illinois built the biggest structure and modeled it after the Pantheon in Rome, right down to the oculus in the ceiling.

This is the remnant of one of many trenches built in the hills outside Vicksburg during the siege.  The Union shelled Vicksburg from these heights.

General Grant, the victor at Vicksburg.  After a couple attempts to break the southern lines failed in May, Grant chose to fight a war of attrition and basically starved the city into surrender by July.

One of several Ohio memorials at the battlefield.  It's in the form of a minie ball, a strange choice, since this type of bullet was responsible for thousands and thousands of deaths on both sides during the Civil War.

The USS Cairo.  This union ironclad was launched in 1862.  Its job was to clear mines in the waters around Vicksburg.  It sank late in that year after...hitting a mine.  Whoops!  The boat rested in the mud for a century until it was raised in 1964.

The Missouri memorial.  There are thousands of plaques and memorials on the battlefield, most of them commemorating one division from a state that fought at the spot of the memorial.  Driving around, it becomes obvious that Missouri sent many men to fight on both sides.  Missouri was a border state where slavery was legal, but it didn't secede and join the Confederacy.  Missourians joined both the Union and Confederate forces in large numbers.  Brothers fought against each other.  A lot of men died.

Down by the Vicksburg waterfront there are a lot of cool murals.  This one commemorates a largely forgotten maritime tragedy.  At the end of the Civil War thousands of Union prisoners were released by the defeated Confederacy and were loaded onto the steamboat Sultana, which would then sail up the Mississippi River and transport the men toward home.  The boat was legally authorized to carry 376 passengers; 2400 crowded aboard.  A faulty boiler was only patched, not replaced...to save time and money.  On April 26, 1865 the boiler exploded, the ship sank, and over 1800 people died. By the way, the Mississippi River only touches the southern end of Vicksburg now.  In the 1860s it ran right by the port area, but the river changed course in 1876 and now only a canal of the Yazoo River runs by downtown Vicksburg.

Another mural depicts Theodore Roosevelt visiting Vicksburg as president in 1902.  The locals knew TR was an avid hunter, and they had a guy catch a bear and tie it to a tree so Roosevelt could shoot it.  TR refused, saying correctly that such a setup was not sporting, and the bear was spared.  The media picked up the story, and the bruin became the first, but not last, Teddy Bear.

Cedar Grove mansion, built in the 1840s.  I loved my stay here.

The mansion is on a bluff overlooking the river, and Union gunboats sailed by during the siege, shelling the city.  One of the cannonballs lodged in the wall of this parlor; it's visible to the right of the piano.

Southeastern Ramblings

I've fallen way behind just by not issuing a blog post for four days.  There are so many interesting things to investigate in the southeastern US!  I stayed two nights at Cedar Key, FL.  It's at the end of the road on an island on the Gulf.  No one passed through here.  You have to have it as your destination, or you'll never visit.  It's a village out of the past, Florida as it was 60 years ago.  There are no big fancy developments, probably because there are no marquee beaches.  But it's a nice place to hang out.  I stayed at a very nice condo; mine is on the top floor, second building on the left.  I rode out a storm here on Friday.  Always a good thing when you're by the sea.

The tide surged a good foot above normal during the storm.  You can see here that the Gulf came up onto the street.  Probably not a rare occurrence.

The Island Hotel is an institution in Cedar Key.  The building, with its arcade and wraparound deck, reminded me of a typical Australian town, all of which have such a structure serving as the focal point of town; a place where people sleep, eat, drink, and socialize.

After a long day of rain, the skies cleared at sunset and I soaked up the beauty from my deck.

Sunset at Cedar Key.  If you visit Florida and you want to see how it used to be, come to Cedar Key.

Here the Lizards are way down upon the Suwanee River!

Flooded cypress swamp near the Suwanee, which like many northern Florida rivers is in flood after a couple downpours in the past week.

Now I'm on St George Island, near the fine town of Apalachicola.  This is a shell shot on the beach.

Yesterday was a cool, gray day on St George...with temperatures in the 60s and lots of clouds, it was just like a summer day in Monterey!  But the sun popped out briefly and the light was fine.

The Gulf is to the right in this pic.  The gulfside of the island is low sand dunes and grass.  Nothing too large grows there since storm surges from hurricanes overrun the area several times a century.  But farther inland, the dunes are much higher, and protect the inland side of the island from surges.  Here, on the left of the pic, large pine forests thrive.

Apalachicola is a fine old town.  I first became aware of it in college, when Ray Ramsey, the meteorologist on KOMO TV, would mention its weather often, simply, I suspect, because he enjoyed saying the name...ap-al-ach-ee-co-la.  It rolls off the tongue.  At any rate, it's a very nice place, with lots of Victorian homes, big old mossy live oaks, and even a Piggly Wiggly!  The Pig was in Portland 50 years ago...there was a Piggly Wiggly across the street from the bowling alley where I hung out.  As a teenager, I used to go to the Pig and sneak a look at the latest Playboy magazines,.  But by 1970 Piggly Wigglys were gone from Portland.  They endure in Apalachicola, and surrounding towns.

A fine Victorian home in Apalachicola, complete with wraparound porch and widows' walk.  Pleasant place to pass a sultry afternoon, with a cool adult beverage.

This is the USS Alabama, BB-60.  The Alabama had a short but distinguished career in World War II, doing convoy duty in the stormy North Atlantic and then fighting the Japanese in the south Pacific.  The ship is now a museum.  The shell to the left of the pic is a 16 inch projectile that was fired out of the three big guns to the right.

This is the Combat Information Center (CIC).  This was my duty station when I was in the Navy in the mid 1970s and except for having more sophisticated radar, my CIC wasn't very different from this one.  CIC is where a ships battles are fought from, basically.  It's the nerve center of a naval vessel.

An engine room on the Alabama.  There were four, one for each engine.  The pic doesn't tell the whole story; There was little or no air conditioning on this ship...even thirty years later that hadn't changed.  And when you were in tropical waters, the temperature in this room could easily reach 130 degrees or higher.  The snipes, as all engine room workers were called, did some serious sweating here.  The rest of us on the ship admired...and pitied...them.  Tough folks, the snipes.

This is a look into one of the 16 inch gun turrets.  The cylinders on the lower floor are powder charges...each shell had to be loaded with a large powder charge.  The shells were actually fired from Gun Plot, nearby.  The guy doing the firing would first press an alarm button, which would alert people to an imminent VERY LOUD firing.  Then he'd simply pull a trigger and the guns would thunder.  I saw this procedure on my ROTC midshipman cruise aboard the USS Newport News off Vietnam in 1972.  That cruiser had 8 inch guns.  Imagine how loud the Alabama's 16 inchers were.

I actually got to use the officers' head...deja vu! 

Here's a typical junior officers' stateroom on the Alabama.  I had a similar room on the USS Chicago thirty years later.  The railings on the bunks (racks in Navy terminology) kept us from rolling onto the deck during heavy weather.  These staterooms were cramped compared to my dorm rooms in college, but luxurious compared to the enlisted mens' quarters, where each man had a tiny locker for his gear and slept three deep on narrow racks.

This is a P 51 Mustang!  It was the state of the art fighter airplane at the end of WW II.  A friend of mine flew these...he never got into combat but if Truman had not dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, Lee would have probably flown this airplane over Japan during an allied invasion.

I also toured the USS Drum, a WWII submarine. I clambered up and down the ladders on the Alabama...muscle memory.  But I struggled with the hatches and cramped spaces on the Drum.  The hatches extended one to five feet above the deck...you had to get through them fast, and I had to take my time.  This was the wardroom; no more than 350 square feet.  All people on board, even the officers, essentially slept in closets.  The enlisted men had to share bunks in shifts, and many of the racks were slung on top of the torpedoes!  If you were larger than 5 feet 6, 135 pounds, you'd have trouble getting space on a submarine.  And I've heard the U-Boats were worse!

Florida Critters

Jr, Liz, and I went to a Marlins game last Monday...our first visit to their new ballpark.  The stadium is beautiful from the outside, though it doesn't much look like a ballpark.

A look inside...Marlins vs Nats.  The stadium has a retractable roof, with windows that can open to reveal a view of the Miami skyline, though the stadium itself is not downtown...it's a mile west or so, on the site of the old Orange Bowl.  Roof was closed for our game...dry but warm and humid.  Could have been open nonetheless.

Most pics on this post will be of critters, some captive, some in their natural habitat, all but one native to Florida.  This is a great blue heron, which ranges coast to coast throughout the US.

An anhinga drying its wings on a path in Everglades NP.

Fine turtle catchin'some rays at Everglades.

A Florida gar.

This gator is a bit blurry...that's because he's in a death roll, having scooped some edible off the muddy floor of his pond.

This shark is at Mote Marine Aquarium.

Lionfish at Mote Marine Aquarium in Sarasota.  These guys are not native to Florida, but have been brought from other areas as pets.  They don't do the local ecosystem any good.

Clown fish in a tank at Mote.

Big ornery gator at Homosassa Springs SP.  He's a good 10-12 feet long.

Barred owls at Homosassa Springs.

This duck had a habit of standing on one leg, like many of his flamingo mates in his enclosure.

Whooping cranes...critically endangered for many years.  Once down to 21 birds, the population has rebounded but is still only a few hundred.

Bald eagle.  First one I ever saw was in his next at the NASA Space Center.

Caracara, native to south Florida.

Roseate spoonbill

Photogenic manatee.

This is not a Florida native.  Lu the hippo was born in the San Diego Zoo in 1960, worked in TV for four years, then came out here.

View from my condo deck at Cedar Key.  This is a little village on an island at the end of the road.  It has a long history of smuggling, lumbering, blockade running, and hurricanes, and is VERY laid back.  It's peaceful here.

Downtown Cedar Key.  With only a fifth of its 1885 population and no major sandy beaches this is Old Florida, a place that time forgot...and residents like it that way.