So, I don't have much of an internet connections tonight, so no pictures. The hotel internet isn't working with my computer, so I'm using the hotspot on my phone, which isn't great right now. Also, not going to go into too much detail cause I'm pretty tired after driving most of the day in the rain.
I went over to the Vicksburg battlefield, which was pretty interesting to compare to the other battlefield I've been to, Gettysburg. Compared to Gettysburg, which is a very open, traditional battlefield one thinks of when thinking of civil war battles, Vicksburg is more forested with a lot of trenches. That means that the battle played out more like a WWI battle, in which troop movement advanced very slowly, sometimes only a few feet each day. Vicksburg also happened over the course of almost three months (it was technically a siege), whereas Gettysburg was done in three days. As both battles ended almost simultaneously in Union victories, they are often seen combined as the turning point in the war.
Also at the battlefield was the USS Cairo, which was an ironclad warship (this early battleship), that was sunk in the Mississippi a few months before the battle of Vicksburg. It was rediscovered in the 1960s, raised from the riverbed and partially restored. That allow you to walk around inside part of it.
After leaving Vicksburg, I made my way into Louisiana, and it started to pour, so I looked for something that I could do indoors. I wound up at the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe. The museum is named after Claire Chennault, who after retiring from the Army, went to China in 1937 to help defend them from the Japanese by founding the Flying Tigers. Being a smaller museum, the two curators spent the entire time telling various stories from each exhibit, ranging from stories from local war heroes, to founding of Delta Airlines, which started in Monroe. I would recommend going here just to hear all the detailed stories.
From there, I continued west on I-20 and drove past Shreveport, which happens to be big casino town. Actually, all of Louisiana is big on the casinos. Even the truck stops, such as Love's have casino's attached to them, weird. I attempted to get some Cajun food for dinner west of Shreveport, which was a miserable fail. The gumbo that I had, I'm pretty sure it was microwaved. I would have gotten better Cajun food at the Popeye's down the street from where I stopped.
I am now in Longview, Texas, (about two hours east of Dallas) where it is still raining, and is supposed to rain in most of the state for the rest of the week. They are in a similar weather pattern what Baltimore back in the summer, where moisture is just pouring in from the ocean, in this case both the Gulf of Mexico, and also the Pacific Ocean southwest of Mexico. They have even had a lot of flooding in Austin, where they are having a Formula One race this weekend. Fortunately, I'm not planning on heading in that direction, partly because I would be tempted to stay in Austin for the race and not head further west. I'm at a Microtel for the night, which has rooms that sort of remind me of dorm rooms, but not necessarily in a bad way, they are just small rooms, but at a good price. But because of the internet issues, I probably won't stay at another one.
Tomorrow, I plan to head to Dallas. If the rain isn't too bad, I'll head to the state fair, the biggest in the country, and check that out. If it pouring like it has been, I'll probably just go to one of the In-n-Out Burgers in the Dallas area (the only place during my trip that has any) and make my way towards Lubbock or Amarillo in the northwest portion of the state, where the weather has been better.
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