35) Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Battlefield

Visited: Thursday, February 24th, 2011 -> Friday February 25th, 2011

I recently found a list of national parks, and I'm going to start recording visits by the official designations - which means that Jamestowne and Yorktown count as a single site, even though that makes no sense to me, since there's a 150 year gap between the two sites.

But the NPS considers Chickamauga and Chattanooga a single site, so I'll go with it. Chickamauga is, by far, the more extensive site; it is in fact the largest battlefield site run by the NPS. But the site itself is - not the most interesting. Being one of the first US Civil War sites to gain much attention, back in the 1880s, there are monuments _everywhere_. Which are nice - but they also get in the way of showing the story of the battle. The visitor center is fantastic, though, and while the battle was not the most interesting, it was important enough to keep interest.

The Chattanooga site, on the other hand, is fantastic. Small - it's at the top of lookout mountain, which seemed to have a _lot_ of million dollar homes. The incline railway up the mountain is a fantastic ride - with a maximum angle of 72.7 degrees, it's a steeper ride than most roller coasters, but at slow speed. And the views from Point Park, the NPS site, are _amazing_. With Megan's ankle bothering her, only Ben and I went to the visitor center and Point Park, so we didn't spend as long there as we might have liked. But I can't imagine returning to Chattanooga with Megan, and not riding the incline railway again.

34) Andrew Johnson Museum

Visited: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

You know, it feels good when something you say sinks in. Some time ago, Ben got a book about the US presidents - but one with a particular bias. I pointed this out to Ben at the time.

And then, many years later, we visited the Andrew Johnson museum - and Ben remembered the book, and my comment. Because Johnson is typically reduced, in history, to his impeachment; the Andrew Johnson museum gave a much more complete (albeit with it sown bias) picture.

And, even better, preserves two of Johnson's Greenville homes _and_ his tailor shop. Even better, since Megan's ankle was bothering her, we were there alone - and the ranger showed us both the general video _and_ a video tour of the Johnson homestead, so that Megan could avoid the stairs. This is exactly my type of NPS site, and it's very nicely done - and quiet.

33) Antietam

Visited: Sunday, February 20th, 2011

Deja vu. Driving up to the visitor center, I _remembered_ it, very viscerally; I _think_ this might have been where I got my copy of A House Divided. The visitor's center is nice - though honestly the bookstore isn't up to that in many of the national parks. But what really makes Antietam is the driving tour - it's hard to imagine the number of people killed there in but a single day, but it's easy to picture the progress of the battle over the day, and easy to understand how the landscape effected the choices made.