vicksburg military park

the 4th grade learning fair has come and gone.  hallelujah.  this time of year is just nuts, so it's good to knock one thing off of the list!  william chose vicksburg national military park as his project.  i went in 6th grade on a field trip.  chase biked through it in college.  however, we weren't much help in providing much info.  therefore, we took a family field trip!! 


william is all into military anything right now, so he was in heaven.  they all loved it, though.  i'm pretty sure they ran up and down every hill there shooting at each other and re-enacting the entire battle. 

illinois memorial

mississippi memorial

if you look closely, you can see the zigzag trenches that they dug to get up the hill during fighting.  

 the horses were dying of dehydration during the siege, so one regiment used a domesticated camel named douglas.  i thought this was pretty interesting, but chase was ready to kill me as we searched and searched the cemetery for douglas' grave.  then william tells me that it's not a grave.  it's only a marker because he got shot, and then he was eaten by his own men because they were starving.  alrighty then. 

we all learned a lot.  i haven't seen a grade, but his finished product should have gotten him a pretty good one! 

one more learning fair to go....