Saturday, August 13

Today we drove about 100 miles south to the Chickamauga, Georgia battlefield of the Civil War.  This is just a little bit south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Again I'm struck by the beautiful green hills of Tennessee.  This national park is a memorial to one of the worst battles of the Civil War.  We stopped at the Visitor Center and learned that one of the Rangers would be doing a tour shortly about prisoners of war.  He led a caravan of about a dozen cars and made stops at 5 places in the park to tell us about 5 individual prisoners.  It was a very different tour, but quite effective.  I hadn't really thought about POWs from the Civil War, but he had really done his research and told very effective stories about these prisoners.  Interestingly in the early days of the war there was an agreement that prisoners would be exchanged with the other side and then they would be returned to the war.  Often they were processed and then sent home to wait for their paperwork telling them to report to their unit.  Not surprisingly many soldiers chose to surrender rather than be shot believing they would have a nice rest at home before continuing on with the war.  That worked for a while until the agreement was changed because the Confederacy wasn't returning the black soldiers.  Instead they claimed that they were runaways and therefore the property of the south and were kept and imprisoned or put back into slavery.  The Union said that was not the agreement and stopped the exchange program. The soldiers captured at the battle of Chickamauga from September 19-21, 1863 were caught in this change of rules and, instead of going home as they expected, were sent to terrible prisons where as many as 25% of the prisoners died of disease or starvation.

After the tour we spent some time at the Visitor Center where there is an extensive gun collection which Michael enjoyed.

Again we got a little lost in a sketchy part of Chattanooga on the way back since the highways go right through town, but we eventually figured it out and made our way home.  Dinner was back at the Legends restaurant where we had the Italian buffet on Thursday because we still had a credit balance on the gift card from our owners update.  Tonight they had a special $21.95 prime rib dinner and the soup, salad and side dishes could be ordered separately for just $9.95 so two could split the large piece of prime rib, which is what we did.  The prime rib was great so it was a good deal.  For an hour of our time listening to the low pressure timeshare presentation, we got 3 meals which was well worth it.

Tomorrow we head for the last stop in Nashville.