Petersburg

Just back from a trip to Richmond and the Petersburg Battlefield.

This trip had been planned for two weeks ago, but it had to be put off after a storm ripped through my father's street, blew down some of their 100-year-old oak trees and damaged most of the rest. Top picture shows the house next door; they also lost their car. The neighbors on the other side lost all three of their cars. These trees have stood through a century of thunderstorms, including one I remember that ripped the roof off a Kmart garden center a mile away and sent 8x8-foot sections of corrugated fiberglass roof hurtling down the streets. So this must have been some kind of storm.

I was worried that the Petersburg Battlefield might be really crowded on the Saturday of a three-day weekend that was also a perfect day, but really it was nearly deserted.

I loved it that this section of reconstructed earthworks is slowly dissolving into mud, just like the originals would have. There was also a young interpreter here in Union uniform who let Ben hold her rifle – I wanted him to get a sense of how heavy they were – and fired it off so they could hear the noise and see the smoke.

At the famous Crater. Mary and Clara explore the entrance to the 500-foot-long tunnel, and Ben contemplates the remains of the crater itself.

Ben tries to divine the meaning of a mysterious sign near the Crater tunnel.

When we walked out of the introductory movie Ben said, "Hey dad how historically accurate was that?" Mary said, "That should be our House Words."