Deflection

I started this morning by touring Columbus-Belmont State Park. There was a large number of kiosks describing the Battle of Belmont on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. Before the battle, the confederates had troops on both sides of the river. Since they were expecting US Grant to come at them from the north on the east side of the river, they built Fort DeRussy. To protect the fort, they dug rife trenches to protect the fort, and these trenches are big. Even with today’s excavation equipment, to would take weeks to move the amount of soil that they moved to protect the fort, and I can only assume that they use wheel borrows and shovels. This was a monumental task.

The Battle of Belmont was US Grant’s first battle. He floated his troops down the Mississippi River and unloaded the troops on the west side of the river. When they were ready, the troops march south aways from the river and attacked Fort Anderson, and he captured the fort. But, at the same time, the confederates brought troops across the river and chased Grant to the north, but not until Grant had burnt the fort down.

Since Grant was chased out of the battlefield, some thought that he was not a good commender and wanted him removed, but Lincoln took a liking to his strength in taking the fort. As for tomorrow, I will tour Fort Donaldson that was Grant’s next war campaign tomorrow.

Regarding my drive over here near Fort Donaldson on the Cumberland River, the highways in the state of Kentucky are unsafe. The have they have resurfaced the pavement often, but this where the safety issues stop. There is a large drop off on the edge of the pavement, there are no shoulders, the ditches are not recoverable, and they have resurfaced so many times that the to guardrails are not the correct height above the pavement. In most cases, a vehicle would dive over the top of the guardrails instead of the guardrails keeping the vehicle from hit something worse than if the obstacle directly. And, by driving on these highways pulling a trailer, I cannot help but wonder how close my trailer is to the oncoming truck. This is not fun.

Roger