can't seem to leave Georgia

We decided to have lunch in Fort Oglethorpe and do some more shopping when I found outrageously good deals at Hamrick’s (sorry they only exist in the deep south). Then we had to go the further 4 miles to go to Chickamauga Battlefield since everything in this town was 

 named “Battlefield” including the cinema, theater, restaurants, shopping centers, and even (and I did not think this was appropriate) their medical center.  Don’t you want to go see your doctors and get your tests done at “Battlefield Medical Center”?  Okay, there is a battlefield here, let it go, but then we got there.  And John and I got schooled on some  history that we thought that we knew well. 

 When people say that the War of Northern Aggression is still being fought in places in the South, this is not far off the mark and yet, neither John nor I knew that this was the first military park made into a National Park, first commemorated only 40 years after the war with veterans from both sides on hand to

 christen it.  This battlefield was second only to Gettysburg in loss of life and the park was immense with monuments everywhere, plaques everywhere, cannon everywhere, and pyramids of cannon balls to mark significant spots that weren’t already marked by other 

monuments.  This battlefield spans two states and all the big names were there: Hooker, Hood, Bragg, Longstreet, Grant were all there and it had the same feeling as Gettysburg…a hush that is half reverent awe and half a change in the very fabric of the landscape because of the actions that were taken here.  I find that huge battlefields make me feel the same way that I feel around things like Stonehenge—some weird force that makes it different, but you're not sure how.

 This most likely only occurs in my head, but it is real and

demands respect.  Maybe we have only heard of this battle as attached to the Battle of Chattanooga, but neither a boy from Georgia or a girl whose father is a Civil War buff knew about this place.  Very important diversion that made it worth not 

getting to Norris Dam in Tennessee before it was too dark to see anything of the water or the dam.  We stopped for the night in Berea, KY because the Detroit Free Press readers rated this the number one shopping destination on I-75 because of the arts and crafts there.  We had to bring the plant, the drinks, and other things out of the car so that they wouldn’t freeze in the night and we’re in Kentucky where it is warmer than in Georgia this morning…