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Smaller drive, longer day. Katie had decided that she wanted to see Graceland before we left Memphis so we had to head in the opposite direction to get there. It was fairly easy to find, although I don’t remember the walls surrounding it to be that far away from the house. Katie snapped off a number of shots as I drove past slowly, and then we reversed our direction and headed off to Shiloh. I wasn’t sure what to expect as it was not the same battlefield as Gettysburg or Vicksburg, and with the twins as well...
We arrived at the visitors centre and were met by an elderly gentleman volunteer who seemed amazed that anyone had arrived today, as it had started snowing. He showed us around the visitor’s centre, and seemed genuinely concerned that we enjoy ourselves. There was a presentation about the battle which lasted 40 odd minutes. After, I tentatively asked what they thought. To my surprise, they were enjoying the experience. The battlefield of Shiloh is spread out, with most of the battle taking place over a three mile long by three mile wide spread of land. It is forested scrub with the occasional field, the Shiloh Church and several geographical features, such as The Bloody Pond, The Hornet’s Nest, The Peach Orchard.
The drive around 5he Park alone normally takes an hour, and that’s without stops. We spent over 3 1/2 hours travelling around, and were amazed at the fact that at the battle of Shiloh were; 2 future presidents, the future author of Ben Hur and the future journalist who would go to Africa and mention those immortal words, “Dr Livingstone I presume?” An amazing experience.
The driving continued, with us now running quite behind schedule. The GPS took us out of Tennessee and straight across Alabama to Birmingham, and then north to Georgia and Atlanta. Well, it should have, except there were workworks all through the interstate junctions in Birmingham, and the GPS didn’t recognise this. The third time it tried to send us through the same exit which was closed resulted in me taking the car through downtown Birmingham until I knew that we were passed the roadworks and could get back to the interstate to Georgia. We ended up finally getting to the hotel about 9pm, exhausted.
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