At the northern end of the Colonial Parkway in The Colonial National Historical Park, in Yorktown, is the Yorktown Battlefield. The Nelson House, which was built around 1724, and may have served as Cornwallis’s headquarters during the final battle of the Revolutionary War, and the battlefield was the site of the British defeat. Both the house and the historic siege earthworks were restored in 1976. The Moore House is located in the eastern part of the park and is where surrender negotiations took place in 1781.
The Richmond National Battlefield Park commemorates 13 American Civil War sites around Richmond, Virginia, which served as the capital of the Confederate States of America for most of the war. The park connects certain features within the city with defensive fortifications and battle sites around it.
The Tredegar Iron Works was the chief ironworks of the Confederacy, and a big factor in the decision to make Richmond its capital. It supplied about half the artillery used by the Confederate States Army.
Sometimes when bad things happen you can turn them into experiences of a lifetime. I was relatively young when the plant I was working at as Quality Supervisor shut its doors after over 100 years of operation. I took my severance package and seeing that I was not tied down to returning at a given time I packed up the van and headed to Alaska from my home in New England. I took my elderly parents with me since they had both recently retired paying them back for all of the family trips they took us kids on when we were young. We headed north up through Vermont passing over the border to Montreal. You can click the links for more in depth posts on each attraction. In Quebec we picked up the Trans Canada Highway and headed west averaging 600 miles per day.
Into Alaska and the end of the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction and then on our way to Tok where a meal of caribou sausage and salmon chowder in a bread bowl was our welcome to the state.
Instead of repeating the route south along the Alaska Highway we took the Cassiar Highway south. We passed by Bear Glacier and made our way to the charming communities of Stewart, British Columbia and Hyder Alaska.
Badlands National Park was next on the agenda. This again was one of my mother’s favorite parks as it was a setting of many of her historical fiction novels she liked to read.
A visit to my aunt and uncle in Cohoes, New York and then home. It was good to see New England and home after many months on the road but the memories of the trip will last a life time. My parents would both pass in a few years and I was glad I could give them this trip in their final years.
Big Hole National Battlefield in Wisdom, Montana preserves a battlefield fought between the US Army and the Nez Perce Indian tribe. The Nez Perce fought a delaying action against the 7th Infantry Regiment here on August 9 and 10, 1877 as they were trying to escape to Canada. In 1992 the park was made a part of Nez Perce National Historical Park, which consists of 38 separate locations in five different states, following the flight of the Nez Perce tribe from the U.S. Cavalry.
Big Hole National Battlefield is located on 1,010.61 acres with a year-round visitor center in the park.
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt more popularly known as Chief Joseph was the leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce in the early 1870s when they were forcibly removed by the United States federal government from their ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon onto a significantly reduced reservation in the Idaho Territory. Conflicts with white settlers in 1877 led to the Nez Perce War culminating in this final battle at the Big Hole.
The Pfalzgrafenstein Castle is the signature castle in the Rhine River of Germany. The keep of this island castle, a pentagonal tower with its point upstream, was erected 1326 to 1327 by King Ludwig the Bavarian. Around the tower, a defensive hexagonal wall was built between 1338 to 1340. Later additions were made in 1607 and 1755, consisting of corner turrets, the gun bastion pointing upstream, and the characteristic baroque tower cap. The castle would string chains across the Rhine blocking passage of shipping until a toll was paid.
This portion of the Rhine River Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing castles about every mile of the river. The best way to see the castles is to take a cruise up the river. There are also roads paralleling the river that can be driven on both sides.
Get off the road and up into some of the castles. Some of them have been converted into hotels or inns, some are ruins and some are museums. The views down into the river are also spectacular.
Even in the winter you can visit many of the castles with the added bonus that you might find yourself completely alone as we did on a subsequent trip. Well worth the trudge up the ice path.
