Day 18 Week 3

Tonight I am in Appomattox Virginia. ‘Where a Nation Reunited'. Appomattox was the scene of the surrender by General Robert E Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S Grant, on April 9^th 1865. Tomorrow, I will visit the battlefield and the site of the surrender and also the new Confederate Museum that has just opened up.

This morning I took a lovely drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is a beautiful, scenic drive along the top of the Blue Ridge which is part of the Appalachian Mountain group. The total parkway is 469 miles long. (755kms) It has a maximum speed limit of 45mph so it is not for those that are in a hurry to get anywhere. I did about 80 miles of it before I was pushed off by a detour due to the road being closed ahead (Don’t know why). I took the opportunity to pick up some speed and make my way towards Appomattox. I met some really nice people at one of the lookouts (They are called ‘Overlooks’ here) along the parkway. They were out for a Sunday ride on their motorbikes. We talked for about ½ hour.

Wild turkeys on the Parkway

On my way to Appomattox, I stopped in at the National D Day Memorial in Benson Virginia. It is amazing. It commemorates all the Allies that took part in the D Day landings. Again the pictures don’t do it justice.

This part of the memorial depicts the beach landings with simulated bullet strikes impacting on the water around the troops. They have managed to use fountains that shoot up for a milli second so that it appears like bullet impacts.

Tomorrow I will visit the sites around here and then I am off to Manassas outside of Washington DC. The site of the first and second battles of Bull Run.