39) Boston

Visited: Sunday, June 19th, 2011

The Boston National Historic Park actually consists of a number of related attractions along the Freedom Trail. We didn't walk the Freedom Trail today - we have before, though, and undoubtedly will again - but merely visited the Visitor's Center. Which, honestly, isn't the highlight; I was surprised at how sparse the bookstore was. But, we do now have our passport stamped.

38) Longfellow House - Washington's Headquarters

Visited: Sunday, June 19th, 2011

For Father's Day, we went to the Longfellow House, which isn't easy to park near but which was well worth the walk. It's unusual among the historic sites we've visited, in that the furnishings all date back to Longfellow; the preservation of the house began early, and this has left the house feeling very much like a step into history. The split history of the house - the original owner, a British sugar plantation owner who fled prior to the revolution, followed by a brief stint as Washington's headquarters, followed later by Longfellow - makes for a somewhat schizophrenic tour, but appropriately so as it's clear that the house's place in history was part of the draw for Longfellow, and was actively enhanced (with a bust, paintings, and the like) during his ownership.

One nice aspect of the house is the preservation of open space in Cambridge; there are no houses between the Longfellow House and the Charles. On the front lawn, they have set up era-appropriate amusements, which really caught Ethan's attention.

37) San Antonio Missions

Visited: Monday, April 4th, 2001

Like many who have been to San Antonio, I've visited the Alamo - but I'd never visited the other four missions, which collectively make up the San Antonio Missions NPS site. The largest, and only restored, mission is San Jose. The mission itself was very nice - save for the church, we we didn't get to see as it's being restored - but what really made the ranger tour for me was the grist mill. It's simply fascinating to see how the the mission inhabitants worked around their distance from the San Antonio river to still run a water wheel. And the ranger explained the phrase "keep your nose to the grindstone", as noticing if the stone is rotating too fast and burning the wheat. No idea if it's the actual origin of the phrase, but it's a fine story.

The other three missions are much less complete, but interesting in their own right. Both San Juan and Espada had multiple church sites, including an incomplete late attempt at a new site at San Juan. Espada also has a separate area to see one of the aqueducts which helped make up the advanced water system. It's an impressive sight - particularly for being over 250 years old. The final mission we visited was Conception, which is much closer to downtown San Antonio and as a result there's really little left save for the church. But the church is in _fantastic_ shape - it's all original, including some very impressive wall decorations.

The most fascinating aspect of our visit was the understanding we gained of how San Antonio came to be; the Alamo was an important step in the history of the city, but it's really the missions which brought together the population to eventually making for the town.

36) Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park

Visited: Friday, April 1st, 2011

It's interesting - the two first presidential sites we've visited, on our quest, are for Johnson and Johnson. And there are a number of parallels between the men; as often as I've heard the comparison between Lincoln's presidency and Kennedy's, I don't think I've ever heard the two Johnsons compared much.

The LBJ park is actually two separate areas, 14 miles apart. In Johnson City, there is the museum and the boyhood home. The museum is very nicely done, in what was once a hospital, with not one but two film showing regularly. The only thing I wish for was more on Lady Bird's life - but we didn't watch the second movie, focused on her, so I guess it's my own fault.

One reason we didn't watch the movie is that the tour of the boyhood home was starting. It's an interesting old home, which particularly helped me to understand how folks dealt with the Texas heat (nearly every room opened to the outside, so that a screen door could let a breeze through). The other striking feature was the small water tower in the backyard, which gave the Johnsons something resembling running water in the house.

We then proceeded to the ranch. The introduction movie was wonderful - it was film of Johnson showing a reporter around the ranch, which made for an ideal introduction. Well, save for the disappointment it caused that we didn't enter the ranch via the original "underwater road" entrance. There is a CD tour freely distributed (to be returned); we've had great luck with these (most recently in Acadia), so we took advantage of it. But because you have to loop around a landing strip, there's a lot of land with nothing much to talk about, so they added songs. The first I didn't recognize - an old Texas song, I believe - but the second was "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", which I suspect I'll now forever more associate with the LBJ Ranch (just as "We Are Family" instantly brings to mind the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates). Being a working ranch, we had to wait patiently on crossing cows a couple of times, and when we got back to the start of the loop discovered a cow who decided to stand guard over its entrance.

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.