Day 15 -- Jackson to Nashville, Tennessee -- 131 Mileas

The State of Tennessee has 38 Civil War battlefields, the most after Virginia which has three times as many. Today, as we traveled east on Interstate 40, we saw the occasional reference to such historic sites, but it wasn't until we reached the turnoff for "Parker's Crossroads" battlefield that we decided to leave the Interstate and explore.

Yesterday we tried visiting the Fort Pillow battlefield, but changed our minds when the directional sign indicated that it was 51 miles north of our location. I would like to have seen Fort Pillow as it was the battle depicted in the movie with Mathew Broderick as the commander of black troops. During the battle of Fort Pillow, the black troops were basically massacred by the Confederate troops who showed them no mercy.

Today, though Parker's Crossroads was some distance away to the south once we had exited, we discovered that the National Park Service had established a handy visitor's center and museum just a stone's throw from the offramp. Being so handy, the visitor center was just what we needed since our timeline was pretty tight today. We had already made reservations at an RV park in Nashville, but the computer response informed us that we should arrive before 1:00 p.m. We weren't sure why the camp would have such an early arrival demand, but we decided to heed that advice if possible. Probably they asked us to arrive early since it was Sunday.

The visitor center turned out to be really professionally designed and attractively decorated, and we enjoyed the minimalist nature of it. Just inside the door, we found the resident staff member who turned out to be quite pleasant and talkative about the local attractions, the battlefield, and, of course, her state of Tennessee. She told us that there would be no charge and we were free to tour the museum, watch the movie detailing the battle, and browse the gift shop as we desired.

By the way, when you click on any of the photos you will see a small version of that photo on the bottom of the screen. If you click on that thumbnail version, it will expand into a much larger version for viewing.

The battle of Parker's Crossroads was not one of the Civil War battles that I had ever read about. Starting in the 7th grade I became a great fan of the conflict between the states that lasted from April 1861 to April 1865. This interest started when my freshman year math teacher at Eliot Junior High, Mr. Schilling, learned of my love for history and asked if I'd like to attend a meeting of the Pasadena Civil War Roundtable with him.

"Would I!" I told him, and the next time the Roundtable met, another classmate and I went along with Mr. Schilling to the meeting. At the meeting, classmate, Vince Beggs, and I met a wonderful gathering of older gentlemen who were just thrilled to have two young people our age take an interest in their passion for the Civil War.

Vince and I especially loved it when the club members would bring along their vintage Civil War weapons and other era collectibles. They would even let us hold their artifacts -- very, very carefully -- which really emmersed us in the lives of soldiers in that far off-time of the 1860s. I don't know about Vince, but those meetings instilled in me a life-long appreciation and interest in the Civil War.

As I have learned from my reading over the years, one of the major aims of General Grant during the war was to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, stop supplies from reaching the south from the Gulf of Mexico, and thus split the Confederacy in two. Once the Mississippi River was in Federal control, the Civil War would be all but won.

Though I'm not sure I understand how the battle of Parker's Crossroads played into the eventual downfall of Vicksburg, the movie we watched seemed to propose that theory. It could be because Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been directed to destroy Grant's supply-line railroad in west Tennessee, lost 300 of his 1,800 total troops who were captured at Parker's Crossroads. With the Confederates weakened and pushed further to the south, it might have been less possible to bring up support for Vicksburg. Or, it might have been that once Nathan Bedford Forrest successfully destroyed Grant's supply-line railroad in west Tennessee, and Grant switched his supply terminus to Memphis, perhaps Grant found the Memphis solution even better than what he had had before the Battle of Parker's Crossroads. More research will be necessary to answer that one.

Even though I'm not certain what the significance of the Parker's Crossroads battle was afterall, the movie we watched detailed each and every movement of the various military components of each side and explained how they were important. The graphics were so clearly depicted that it was easy to follow along (see photo above left).

At this point we were definitely running out of time for reaching Nashville over 80 miles away, so we skipped lunch and hit the road. Today it continued to be overcast and rainy, but even the somber weather could not disguise the beauty of the forest that lined each side of Interstate 40 as we motored east. All the fall colors were resplendent in their golds and yellows and reds.

Amazingly, when we reached Nashville just a short time before the 1:00 p.m. deadline, we found the small and quaint city of our imagination about a hundred times larger than it should have been. Still, Concetta's trusty iPhone directed us right to our destination camp without error. We arrived on time, checked in, and found our campsite to be quite level and reasonably near the laundry room that we hoped to use as soon as we had set up.

So now the rig is set up, the laundry is washed, dried, put away, and we're ready to get our showers done so we can settle in for the night. Tomorrow we're scheduled to visit President Andrew Jackson's home, the Hermitage for a tour of the seventh President's gardens. We decided not to do the mansion, so we hope it doesn't rain on the garden tour.

Now dinner is over, it's time to relax and kick back. While we're doing that we wish you exciting adventures of your own. Ciao!