Andersonville and more ...

We drove an hour or so south through rolling mostly forested hills to Andersonville. Officially named Camp Sumter, the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp here has become notorious and synonymous with the worst in wartime imprisonment. This National Historic Site has become three fold ... partly about the historic camp and its prisoners, a national cemetery, but also, increasingly, a monument and museum for American prisoners in all wars.


The National Prisoner of War Museum here is powerful. It shows much of what it was like for our men in various wars. No matter how much we read about such imprisonment, seeing the actual size of the cages and rooms prisoners were kept in is far more impressive. The visual depictions of life as a prisoner of war are stunning and made a deeper impression on me than anything I have ever read.

The POW museum is much of what is available at the visitor center but follow that with the drive tour that winds around the Andersonville Prison area itself, again being presented with the actual space thousands of men occupied in tiny tents, the stockade fence they were surrounded with, the hillsides that sloped down to the swampy area of the tiny creek that was their source of water ... all make a solid impression greater than any words.

From there we drove around to the National Cemetery in which nearly 13,000 soldiers were buried in trenches during the 14 months the prison operated. The picture below shows how close the tombstones were placed as the bodies were put shoulder to shoulder in the trenches.

From Andersonville we headed for Providence Canyon, keeping an eye out for some where to have lunch. As we drove through Preston, Georgia, I couldn't help but see the mural shown below. Painted on the side of the business it definitely got my attention and coupled with a growling stomach, we stopped. Definitely local, home cooking in style, we enjoyed our stop for lunch.

Our next stop is often described as Georgia's Grand Canyon which intrigued me, having seen the Grand Canyon in Arizona. What interested me even more was when I read up on it ahead of time. This canyon is "the result of man-made changes in the environment. When farmers settled the area in the 1820's, they cleared forest and plowed their fields. They did not use strip cropping, terraces, and contour plowing but plowed straight down the hillsides. The rows became ditches then gullies. When the gullies cut through the more compact Clayton Formation to the unconsolidated Providence sands, erosion progressed rapidly. In a comparative short time, the force of flowing and creeping water formed Providence Canyon."

 Lest some of you are either concerned or at least wondering, Time was of course spent in the gift shops and caps were purchased at both Andersonville and Providence Canyon and, at the former, a small squirrel in a bin full of small stuffed animals just about shouted, "Me, me, buy me!" so I did. The canyon gift shop also had inexpensive honey straws, a regular size straw sealed at both ends and filled with honey which I had to try. Yummy! For future trips I might even get some for a simple quick snack but I guess I should first use up the packets of honey we have (she scribbles a note to self to bring those next time).