Friday was a travel day. We drove from Savannah to Americus, a small town in southwest Georgia. It is known as Carter country, close to where President Carter grew up. It is peanut harvest right now, so we have not been able to see what the peanut fields look like before harvest, but there are plenty of cotton fields. Is it un-PC to say that cotton fields are really pretty?

We stayed at a cool little RV park, well it would have been cool, if it were cool and if it were not infested with nats. They give you paper fans upon arrival to help you keep the nats off. The camp host said they are particularly bad during peanut harvest. If not for the nats, the RV park has a disk golf course, a foot gold course (soccer golf), regular golf course, and paddle boats on a small pond. There were not many options of places to stay in the area so we tolerated it for a night.

The reason we were in this area was for the Civil War re-enactment event. There are plenty throughout the country but this was the only one that worked with our itinerary. It took place in Andersonville which is where the Confederates set up their war prison camp. So, there is definitely significant civil war history there. About Andersonville prison.

The event was a combination of town fair and re-enactment. It started with a home-town parade: mayor, marching band, queens;

Then the re-enactment people marched through.

There were lots of food booths, craft booths, and entertainment. The re-enactment people also set up their tents, as they camped there for the weekend.

You could visit their tents and talk with them, so we learned a bit of Civil War history from the Southern perspective.

The actors told us that they typically re-enact real battles they way they actually happened at the authentic locations but since this location was not an original battle spot, they kind of ad-libbed the event. It still gave a us a good taste of what re-enactments are like.

This particular battle lasted about 35 minutes. There were 4 cannons on the Union side, 2 on the Confederate side, about 25 Union soldiers and about 60 Confederates. The Confederates won! We took some video which I cannot post, but if you are interested in seeing the action we can show you when we get back or try emailing it to you.

Afterward you could visit the medical tent. The woman is Rachel, a friend of Nicole’s (Cousin Brian and Joan’s daughter-in-law). She is a nurse in real life. They try to re-enact the medical activities as true to history as possible. We did not watch for too long.

This day was probably our most surreal day, given the location and activities.

Afterward, we headed to Jasper, GA, which is about 1 hour north of Atlanta to ride out Hurricane Nate with Michael’s sister Ilene, her daughter Alexis and Alexis’ father Sandy. It was not really a hurricane but rather just persistent rain.