Exploring, At Last

Be proud of us. Eric and I finally got out of the house! Not for shopping or going to work. No, we went to Richmond. Oh, I felt the wind in my hair. (why is there no type font that would indicate dripping sarcasm?) In any event, we were on the road.

I mentioned to Eric that I had been to the place where Stonewall Jackson was killed when I was in the area years ago. But, oh, the memory grows dim. What I really remember is seeing the trenches that his soldiers dug. They are still there. Some places never change. We stopped where Stonewall Jackson died. He had been shot three times by his confederate soldiers. He may have survived that, but he had pneumonia and died from that. This is the building where he died. I have a picture of the bed he lay in and the clock that ticked off the hours, but I thought I'd spare you that. He was one of my favorite generals in the war. He was very bright and didn't do stupid things that hurt his men. What more could you ask for? Well, perhaps that he fought for the Union side, but you can't have everything.

We didn't have Karen with us, so there was little advanced planning or maps or anything like that. We did stumble into a really cool museum. It was about Richmond during the Civil War and it is housed in an old Pattern Factory by the James River. A pattern factory did not make tissue paper patterns used to make dresses. It made and used patterns of big, clunky metal things. They would stick the patterns into sand and then remove them and then fill the hole with metal. The picture on the left is one of the pipes that carried steam or water. They used water originally to drive the work and then they used turbines around the time of the Civil War.

You may know that Richmond was the capitol of the confederacy. Lee's army worked hard to defend it. In fact, they held on for a very long time, despite being hugely outnumbered. This museum had the nicest rangers in it. It also had a movie and lots of memorabilia. I picked up about a dozen brochures so we will be better prepared when we return. One of the things we learned about was the 7 battle sites that surround Richmond. Eric and I will be back. I even bought a CD to play along with our driving tour.

On the way back we saw this road that goes off to the right. Of course you can't read that sign. It is the road to Powhite Parkway. Is the litter on the road... Sorry. I am much too easily amused.