July 30: Mill Springs Battle and more of Cumberland Lake

I'M BACK!!!! YEAH!!!! Boy, I've missed this form of communication. And I have so much to say.

One day last week (at this point in time, last week was a blurr), we went to the Mill Springs Civil War Battle Memorial. This battle was fought almost exactly where we were camped - back when the Cumberland Lake was just a normal river. It was a cold morning on January 19, 1862 when the north and south met here on these beautiful hills - now covered with homes and pastures and fields full of cattle, corn and tobacco. When the smoke cleared, 159 Confederates and 50 Federal soldiers lay dead over these fields and the Union had it's FIRST significant victory of the Civil War and the beginning of the fall of the western theater of this war.

This cemetery is the Mill Springs National Cemetery. It is the smallest active national cemetery in the country. It holds the graves of many of the Union soldiers killed in the Battle of Mill Springs and other soldiers from the time of the Civil Was through today.







This smaller cemetery, a few miles from the national one, is a Confederate Cemetery. On the left are 148 headstones of identified soldiers of this battle but no actual bodies. The mass grave, on the right, is all of the bodies including unidentified soldiers. This cemetery was dedicated in 1997. The big headstone on this mass grave, in part, says "We know not who they were but the whole world knows what they were. These few died far from their homes but they fill heroes graves and glory keeps ceaseless watch about their tomb."

This was just a random photo I took of a headstone of an actual soldier who died during the Civil War. There were many others that stated they served in the Civil War but had died later. There were lots more stops of this historic battle, but that's pretty much all we looked at. A couple were across the lake.








Here's a picture of Larry and me enjoying the evening and a fire in our tight little corner of our campground. We had to walk along the rail and on top of the bench of the picnic table to get back here to our chairs. And another of me sitting outside using my aluminium foil to help my antenna.



We ate lunch one day out on the lake. We ate right at the edge of the shore but it was pretty muddy so we stayed out a little ways - close enough to stand up in cleaner water. These are the bluffs of this beautiful lake. Because the water was down 50 feet, the Corps was burning off a lot of the logs and trees that are along the shores. There was smoke curling up along the shores all day long. And the sunrise over the lake was gorgeous.

And because I wasn't sure I had taken a sufficient picture showing the close quarters of the camp site, I've added another one. We did pull out of this in one try - which surprised me. We had to drive down the hill to pick up the jet ski that was parked in a flat parking lot, then drive half way back up this hill to the dump station that was on the wrong side of our camper, then haul that mess on up the hill. It was quite the camp site. When we went for a walk, it was either up or down and we never did even try to ride the bikes. Larry's knee when out about the second day so our walking even slowed down.





We're now at Barren Lake just southeast of Bowling Green. We set up in a pouring down rain with a blown circuit breaker somewhere so we couldn't run the A/C while we were running around getting the camper ready to inhabit. We're right on the lake so we'll be able to go swimming anytime and jet skiing any time. Last time we had to walk down that God awful hill, swim and then walk back up that marathon of a hill. We were all hot and sweaty by the time we got back to the camper to change clothes. Now we can just lounge around in our swim suits and jump in whenever the mood hits.

Photos of the camp site tomorrow or the next day. It's rained all but about 2 hours here today and it's suppose to rain all day tomorrow. But my computer works and we have local TV plus satelite. We've welcomed ourselves back into the world. We went a whole week without one report on Obama or McCain. And with CW being our only TV, I have a whole new view of TV programs - several I hope to never see again.