Fort Defiance

     Lock A Campground at Cheatham Dam is closest to the town of Ashland City.  Ashland City has little to offer as far as shopping goes.  There is a Food Lion store and a Walmart, that has to be one of the worst of the whole chain.  We we first came to this particular store, all of the flowers they had for sale were dead.  I don't think anyone much takes care of it.  That being said, Betty, the campground manager suggested we try Clarksville because there was more shopping available there.  As it turns out this was very true, since it is the fifth largest city in the state of Tennessee and just a short distance from Ft. Campbell, the Army base.
   Sometimes I wonder if Jim and I spend more time and gas looking for cheap places to shop, than we do saving money.  One of trips to Clarksville involved finding an Aldi store, where we really like to shop, because we save major dollars. Low and behold, right next to the Aldi store is a Dollar Tree store, so I think we do save money, although it is a long trip.  On the road there we kept seeing a sign that said Ft. Defiance, we couldn't figure it out, but decided on a day off we would drive back over and explore.
     Little did we realize the importance of Clarksville in the Civil War and thus, we began another "learning" lesson.  Clarksville sits on the Cumberland River  and Ft. Defiance sits on a bluff, 200 feet above the Cumberland River and Red River.  Originally the site was held by Indians, but as settlers began arriving in the late18th century, this area became a trading center and a frontier settlement.  The city of Clarksville itself was settled largely by soldiers from the Revolutionary War, who were given tracks of land in compensation for the pay they never received.
    From the information in the visitor's center we learned that Tennessee at first did not choose to be on the Confederate side but soon changed their minds. I can't find information to substantiate that however.  There was a lot of information about what an important port it was on the Cumberland River and how there were many shipments of goods that went down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and up the Ohio River to  Pittsburg.  This area was a major producer of tobacco, so slave labor was very much needed. Clarksville also had four roads and a railroad line that came through it making it a very important trade route. The Confederates set up three camps around the city to protect it since it was highly prized for it's important trade and supply routes.
    During the Civil War the Confederates chose the hilltop as one place to build a fort to defend the river approach to Clarksville.  However, it didn't last long, because in 1862, Union Troops captured the Fort  and renamed it Ft. Bruce.  It wasn't much of a battle to take it, from what I can see, because most of the Confederate Troops had left the area and just the town population was left behind.  The Confederates did try to burn a railroad bridge that was crucial to transportation of goods prior to leaving Clarksville but it didn't take hold and was quickly put out.  Union troops sent in troops, gunboats and two Ironclads to capture the area.  Union troops considered this area very strategic because of the river and railroad.  The USS Cairo and one other ironclad came down the river and captured the city.  The Cairo remained tied up in Clarksville for a couple of days before it headed down river to participate in the capture of Nashville.
    One of amazing things about Ft. Defiance was that it became the "go to" place for runaway slaves and freedmen.  They often were employed in and around the fort.  One display that we saw, showed  a white couple being asked to show their "ID" prior to entering the fort and a former slave was the one checking it.  I'm sure that there were difficult adjustments to be made on both sides.
    We didn't walk the whole trail because it was a very steep walk that led down to the river and around, and these old people weren't into that, on a day that the humidity made it feel like 105 degrees.
It was an interesting stop  and helped us understand more about the Civil War.  Little did we know that the town we chose to shop in, had a history of being important for that same thing, for many, many years.

View overlooking Clarksville from Ft. Defiance

Jim standing with a canon from Ft. Defiance

Entrance to  Ft. Defiance

Confederate Generals

Union Generals

The Battle of Franklin & Carnton Plantation

   The week of July 19th, we took our first two days off work, and did chores, cleaning, washing and getting things put in their places in the RV.  The weather forecast for the week had said rain on Monday and Tuesday, but clear and cooler for the rest of the week.  Yeah!! We would be okay to explore and learn and Wednesday and Thursday.

   Wednesday, July 22, we were up bright and early, dressed and ready  to go!  The heavens opened up and it didn't look like the rain would ever stop.  We decided to drive in the rain and pray that it cleared as we got to Franklin, Tennessee.  On the drive down, the rain came in huge gushes and a lot of people in Tennessee don't seem to know to turn on their lights.

     We arrived in Franklin, starving, and found an Irish Pub, called McCreary's, in the historic downtown area.  We were treated to an appetizing meal of red bean and ham soup and half a rueben sandwich.  That sandwich had real corned beef thick slices.  Finally the rain had gone down to a drizzle at the end of lunch, so we headed to Carnton Plantation to hear about the Battle of Franklin.

     Cranton Plantation was built by Randal and Sarah McGavok in 1826.  It is located in Williamson County, south of Nashville and covers 1,420 acres.  Their ancestral home was in County Antrim, Ireland.  The name Cranton comes from the Gaelic word "cairn" which means "a pile of stones raised to mark a memorable event or to honor a fallen hero".  Little did anyone know how prophetic this would come to be.

    The Cranton Plantation, at the time of the battle, was held by Randal's son John, who had inherited it upon his father's death, and his wife,  Carrie Winder.  Carrie was John's first cousin, once removed, a practice common at that time, according to our guide.      On November 30, 1864, late in the afternoon, while this young woman was standing on her walk she watched 19,000 young men, part of the Army of Tennessee, pass around her home headed toward an already entrenched Federal Army that was equally as big.  How terrifying that must have been.  The strange thing was that one of the men that passed by was a minister, Rev. Thomas Markham, that Carrie had known before her marriage, when she lived in Louisiana. She called to him and they talked.  This was probably the reason that the plantation ended up being used as a hospital after the battle. 
     The battle started just after 4 PM and lasted for 5 hours.  The right wing of the southern army was the one that came past Carnton on their way to the Federal hold.  They ran into a forward line of Federal defense, with artillery fire in the fields around the plantation.  Our guide said there was fierce, hand to hand combat, with many southern casualties.  For the whole Battle of Franklin, which ran from the town of Franklin and out around Cranton, there were nearly 9,500 causalities, which included 2,000 dead, 6,500 wounded and 1000 missing, of that number nearly 7,000 were Confederate soldiers.  Cranton became a field hospital with wounded southern soldiers in every room of the plantation except one, which was reserved for the family. Their yard was also filled with wounded and dead.
     Our guide said one soldier screamed all night long because he had an abdominal wound, among other things, and his intestines were hanging out.  He wanted morphine, but they wouldn't give it to him, choosing to keep it instead, for young men who had a better chance of surviving.  He finally died in the morning.  In the morning the bodies of four confederate generals, were laid out of the back porch of the plantation, so that the remaining soldiers of the Army of Tennessee could file past and honor them.
     The plantation had four rooms downstairs, a parlor,  a room used as a office, dining room and another sitting type room.  Of course there was a very large area that ran from the front doors to the back doors and the rooms led off of it. Upstairs were four bedrooms, one was what the family used, the rest were for wounded. Again, like the downstairs there was a wide center area that ran the width of the house and there were chase lounges there. We saw bloodstains in the bedrooms on the floors, the heaviest which were in the children's bedrooms, which were used as operating rooms.  Those blood stains were a reminder of the ravages of war.  Although the rest of the rooms of the house had been filled with wounded and dying, a lot of the rooms had been  refurbished and the blood stains gotten rid of.  
     The dead were buried on the battlefield, their graves marked with wooden boards, that had the soldiers name, company and regiment.  As the months stretched on, the writing began to fade, so to preserve the graves, the McGavok's donated two acres adjoining their own cemetery. Carrie had carefully kept a cemetery record book with the information from all of the grave markers.  The 
Mc Gavok's and some other people from Franklin donated money to have the bodies dug up from the battlefield and moved to the new cemetery, where each was marked with a small stone, with the information Carrie had kept in the book.  The cemetery was organized by states. Over the years, as families came and found their loved ones some replaced the small headstones with ones their families purchased.  
     When you look at the plantation and go stand at the cemetery your heart breaks for all of the loss of life and this was only the Confederate side, how much more devastation there actually was.  There are 1,481 men men buried here.  It is the largest privately owned cemetery in the nation. This was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Civil War.
      When we left the plantation, we walked out to the slave quarters, which were across the back yard.  These quarters, shown below, were for the house slave families.  There were two rooms up and two down.  There were no slaves here, during the time of the Civil War, because the family had sent them south to Louisiana to live with relatives.

Cemetery

Carnton Plantation

Slave  Quarters Outside

Slave Quarters Inside

                       

  The Beginning of Annie's Adventures

 As a teacher (retired teacher), I think all children should be taken on numerous trips around the U.S., to see wonderful, historic things and beautiful, natural wonders, so they can connect with what they learn in the classroom; so it makes sense.  In a perfect world, their parents might go on extended trips around the US, to expose them to all kinds of historical events.  That won't ever happen, but like I said, in a "perfect world".
     In my non-perfect world, I was one lucky child, when my dad started taking us camping, in the 1950's, with one of the original pop-up campers, the Heilite camping trailer.  It had a single wheel, so it was impossibly easy to swing in and out of places. It retailed for about $420, which was probably a lot of money for my dad.  It had a double bed and then the tent area went over the bed and on out, where it made a side tent area, where you could put sleeping bags on the floor.  The sleeping bags on the floor were occupied by myself, my sister and my brother.  Nice, but the first time we had it out, our sleeping bags were floating in water. Dad had forgotten to put down ground cover. We eventually dried out, but we remembered that trip forever. Where did we go with it?  Michigan, our neighboring state, New England, South Dakota, Yellowstone, Colorado Springs, a trip that made a swing through Des Moines, where my mom was born and raised, and then to Colorado and then south to Kansas to find some Harvey relatives and finally home. On our trip to Yellowstone, my Gram Harvey went with us.  Due to an extra person, the back of the tomato soup colored, Plymouth station wagon served as a bedroom, for she and I. When we traveled we always pulled off the side of the road for lunch.  Dad would pull the cupboard out of the side of the camper and we went about making sandwiches.  I never liked those sandwiches, because they tasted like metal.  The Heilight had an aluminum frame, so I guess that is why the bread tasted bad. He gave us memories, so many memories.  Some good, some not so good, as when we were in Boston.  First we parked the car in a big parking garage, got out and started "down" not  "up".  When we finally found our way out, we headed toward the square and ready to do the Heritage Trail.  We couldn't figure out where to go to start it, so we asked a policeman, who said he had  never heard of it.  We went back to the car and my mom wouldn't talk, because she was pissed we didn't explore Boston.  We went to see Old Ironsides, while she sat under a bridge, in a parking lot, while we were having fun exploring the ship.  She didn't speak to Dad all the way back to Ohio.  We went to Maine, where we got live lobster, from a shed, and boiled it in a pot.  Since I was the oldest, I was allowed to try it but not the others.  In Maine a storm came up and I remember my mom sitting on the floor, trying to hold the tent down.  Oh well, fun times. Fun times because my parents expanded my horizons by taking me places others had only dreamed about. We did it in a camper because that was affordable and away we went. By the time I left home I had visited 38 states of the contiguous U.S.

When my husband, Jim, and I had a family, we decided to follow my parents example and 

take our children to see things, too.  Our trips were a little different, because when we did our summer vacations we usually went with my sister's family.  We, unlike my parents started camping in a tent, because that is all we could afford. Our first trip to Yellowstone was in that tent, where Jim either froze to death and wanted a Coleman heater,  or roasted to death and was sure Coleman made an air conditioner. Next, we graduated to a pop-up Palomino camping trailer, that my husband surprised us with. Our final camping trip as a family was in a Winnabago motor home, that my dad bought and brought home from Florida, so we could use it on vacation.  Our trips were to many varied destinations. We went to Michigan, Kentucky State Parks including General Burnside, out west to Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone and the Tetons, down south through Virginia on our way to South Carolina; a trip to Arkansas and once to Florida. We were on a tight budget and so when we returned home each year we were totally broke. Our kids didn't get to do things that had a price tag attached to it, like the time they didn't get to go into Mark Twain's home, but Becky Thatcher's house across the street was free, so guess where they got to go? Of course they couldn't use the pay telescopes. We've never heard the end of that one.  Sometimes, my sister's family would stop and buy lunch and of course we pulled out the supplies and made lunch, just the same as my Mom and Dad had done.  The kids didn't like that any more than I had years before.  

     Our kids and their cousins got to know each other well, as we shared various vacation destinations.  They probably particularly liked to watch their fathers setting up camp.  Uncle Jim was an electrical engineer and Jim had a degree in education.  Kind of polar opposites.  When we would pull into our campsites, the engineer had all poles marked with color coded tape, so that set up went quickly as opposed to us, who just dumped stuff out.  One time in Michigan the engineer stayed at the campground trenching around the tents, while the rest of us, just went to town to see a movie.  One night at Hungry Mother State Park in Virginia, we were camped side by side. It was a hot night and my sister recalls feeling a slight breeze across her face.  Only a short time later they discovered a bat in their pop up, which Uncle Jim had to usher out.  There was the time my niece, Jennifer, got her hair stuck in fly paper and also the time that nephew, David, almost cut off his toe in the folding lounge chair.  Once when we went to set up our pop-up we had a leak in our water and all the sleeping bags got soaked!  Oh the stories we all could share.

    Family vacations were possible because we went camping. We couldn't afford hotels or motels, so we did the traveling the only way we could.  The kids got to see things that would have otherwise been impossible.  If I had one wish for my own grandkids and all kids out there, it would be to be able to experience traveling, exploring, experiencing and thus learning, about all the wonders of our world.

     

PORT ROYAL STATE PARK

     Today was a day "off", so we decided to try to do some historical exploring, since Tennessee is second only to Virginia in the number of Civil War Battles held in their boundaries, but finding information about those battle grounds is quite daunting.
   One day when we went to Clarksville we got lost and found a way home that passed a place that had something to do with the Civil War so we decided to go back and see if we could find it all over again.  We remembered it had been on Old Clarksville-Springfield Road, so that was where we headed.  Eventually we found the place we had seen it was called Port Royal State Historic Site.
     Port Royal was one of the earliest settlements and became a settler's fort around 1785 and a town in 1797, just one year after Tennessee became a state.  Port Royal was an important commerce center because Sulphur Fork joins the Red River at this location as well as this being on a major stage coach route, The Great Western Road, that crossed the Red River here. The Great Western Road was the major road was the major road west from Nashville. Port Royal was a center of commerce for northern middle Tennessee and South Central Kentucky.
     What made this trip interesting was we met a gentleman dressed in a Tennessee Park Service uniform who was doing some trimming along a park path down to a big bridge.  He gave us an informal history lesson that was very interesting.  He said that this area had been a very important place for tobacco farmers because they brought their product here to ship it to New Orleans.  Buyers bought flat boats that were built right here and shipped the tobacco to New Orleans and then just left the boats there.  The next time they were here, they just bought another boat. He also showed us the foundation a store that was over 200 years old and had served the area.  The next thing he did was give us a botany lesson when he showed us the leaves of a black walnut tree and then showed us another tree that appeared to have similar leaves. The other tree was called the Tree of Heaven and was highly poisonous.  It can kill animals quickly, when they choose to eat a nut and cause anaphylactic shock in humans.
     Port Royal was a transportation corridor for the Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears and for Union and Confederate Solderers during the civil war. Since this was an extremely agriculturally rich area, both Union and Confederate soldiers plundered the area for supplies. Wessyngton Plantation, which was nearby, was owned by George A. Washington.  Before the war this plantation was the nation's largest dark fired tobacco plantation and had the largest slave population in Tennessee.  Following the war those same slaves established schools and churches, opened businesses and even purchased parcels of land from where they had been enslaved.
  We got back in the car and traveled across the bridge to the other part of the park to look at the Trail of Tears.  Had we been dressed more appropriately and it had not been 90 humid degrees we would have walked part of it, but we have decided to leave that for another day.

Check-up Time.

We are currently in Wisconsin visiting my sister and brother-in-law.  It is good to take time away from our traveling life and reconnect.  We have been treated like royalty here, way too spoiled I think by eating out every night. Next year I think we will plan things a little better and allow more time for visiting and doctor's visits.  On our way home, we will stop and visit my brother Steve and his wife, Mona in Ft. Wayne and share a bowl of chili and then we will be off to Lima.  The travel trailer is down at the lake for it's annual check-up so we are hoping that when we go home we can go down and pick it up. Part of the trouble with being a turtle when it is time for a check up is that you have to find a place to stay.  Well off to do some more visiting.  Life is good, well at least so far.

On the Road Again, Fall 2013

    This past summer we spent many, many hours and over $8000 out of our retirement fund to fix up our home so we could sell it.  The renters we had in it, had pretty much destroyed it.  We arrived in April and thought we could be finished by July so we could get to our jobs with the Cradle of Forestry in Virginia.  That never materialized.  July crept into August, then into September.  Finally in September, with our repairs nearing completion,  we had several couples who were very interested in buying the house and it raised our spirits.  One of the most interested people was a you man we had known since he was 16 years old and worked for us as a carryout boy in a grocery store we had moved to the area to manage.  He was an extremely nice young man then and is still so today.  He convinced us to sell the house, on land contract, to him. He gave us a down payment and then we will finance it for five years for him until he can get the loan to complete the transaction.  The little bit of money we got for the down payment was supposed to be used to start paying back our retirement account once we reached our winter work camper jobs in Florida.  He took possession on Oct 1st and we hooked up and went to the campground in Lima to camp until we could get ready to take off.
     Our journey south finally started.  We traveled to Lancaster, OH to Speciality RV so they could do a minor repair to our water heater, awning and toilet.  That didn't take long and we were off to spend a night at Fork Run State Park in Ohio, right down on the Ohio River.  Our second stop was a place in West Virginia and then on to Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina where we made a stop at Cascade Lake Campground to meet the people there for a possible job next summer.  When we left there we headed to Myrtle Beach State Park, South Carolina to begin our leisurely pace to our winter destination of Koreshen State Historic Site, in Estero, Florida.
   Needless to say"'the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray". We began noticing that the car was having difficulty going into 3rd gear on some of our climbs as we were headed south.  The problem progressively got worse.  We stopped for gas just 101 miles short of our destination and called our mechanic at home for some "on the road" advice.  He suggested we stop for awhile and let the transmission cool down, that possibly it had overheated and so we did. When we started back up things seemed to be working better until we got near to Conway, SC which was just 15.3 miles short of our goal.  A loud clunk when we were trying to climb a hill pretty much told us we were dead in the water but low and behold, we pulled off the road right in front of an Aamco transmission shop. Remember our "let go and let God" motto when we started this lifestyle?  Was this an example of that?  So on Thursday afternoon about 4:30 they helped us back the trailer and truck into their shop area. They disconnected the truck and took it in to look at it.  There was no conclusion drawn other than there were a lot of codes showing and it was closing time.  We were welcome to stay in their lot that evening but since we had a reservation at Myrtle Beach State Park I started the lengthy process of trying to contact Good Sam Roadside Assistance to see if we could be towed to the state park.  That was eventually accomplished and we arrived at the state park with the assistance of a large tow truck driven by Scott who expertly got us in our campsite in the dark.  He was a real sweetheart and had tons of patience.  So we were set up for the night.
     On Friday we waited almost all day to hear from Aamco and nothing.  Finally Jim called them and they said it was the transmission but because of the weekend they wouldn't be able to finish it. Okay.  Well we had reservations for Thursday, Friday and Saturday but then we were supposed to go to Hunting Island which couldn't be done without a truck.  Jim went down to pay for one more day on our site but that was all that was available.  He told the lady in the store/office about our plight and she immediately started to remedy the situation.  She somehow got rid of our reservation at Hunting Island and we got our money back.  Then she got ahold of Ranger Bob who came and talked to us.  He  had a site we could use for a week and even found a camphost Wayne Roach who would use his truck to move us to another site.   Thank God for both of them.  Once more "let go and let God" seemed to be working.  We moved to the new site on Monday.  We waited all day Monday to hear from Aamco Transmission and once again nothing so Jim finally called them.  They said they would have it done Tuesday.  Well okay we had paid for Monday and Tuesday on the new site so we were okay.  Tuesday dawned gray and cloudy and once again we waited to hear from Aamco Transmission.  Finally around 2 PM they called.  Our truck would be done on Wednesday before noon.  Oh and the original estimate of  $1600 had more than doubled.  Great where do we get they money for that??  Well it just so happens they have a credit card available for repairs so we can apply for that. One year same as cash so there is no interest unless you don't get it paid off.  Of course since our credit score is less than a mole we both have to get one for $1200 and then write a check for the remainder.  Such a deal!!  But we have to take it.
     So tomorrow we will drive up to Conway in our rental car, sign the paper work, I will take the rental car back and sit at the rental car dealer's until Jim can get the truck and come back and get me.  This may be a real circus.
     My sister says we wouldn't have any luck if we didn't have bad luck. It is bad luck I guess because we sure didn't have that amount of money laying around, but there was a lot of good luck in this deal that we need to be thankful for.  Getting to the campground, having the staff take wonderful care of us, getting the last rental car in Myrtle Beach this past weekend, being able to go to Mass and well the liquor store, as well as breaking down in front of a transmission place just as we blew our transmission. We need to be thankful that we had the trailer and stocked with food to stay in and we have to be thankful we have each other and our dog,"Rory", to keep us company.
    Because we have decided no more site seeing we will go straight down to our son's house in Okeechobee, Florida, where we can camp for free and spend time with our grandchildren.  We will even get to see their soccer matches.
     So while it may be true that we do have bad luck I think in the long run we have to realize we have a lot of good luck to offset the bad.

   

A Small Price to Pay   (Summer 2012) 

If someone had told me I would be cleaning restrooms in retirement I would have told them they were crazy.   But here I am, cleaning restrooms to live for “free”.  It turns out that so far it has not been gross but I imagine that could change at any minute.  As with other things I tend to go overboard.  I like to keep my cleaning supplies in order and Jim washes out our floor mops daily.  We hadn’t been using the public restrooms at our other spots because it was fairly easy to empty our tanks.  Well it was very easy for me since I didn’t do it, Jim did.  Here, we have to pull the tanks or should I say, Jim has to pull the tanks a long distance and it is very inconvenient, so we are reduced to taking showers in the public bathrooms.  As long as I am cleaning them, I am okay with that because I know how much bleach and disinfectant I use. 

     Each park has their own rules about cleaning and their own techniques.  We had the best teachers at Koreshan State Historic site that there could be in bathroom cleaning techniques, plus they came everyday and helped us.  At St. Joe no one comes to help and we have two bathrooms to do everyday.  The guy that was here doing it until we came never cleaned the mops and didn’t use the mop bucket to mop the floors.  How do you mop floors with no bucket? Needless to say those restrooms are looking a lot better now that we are in charge.  I also don’t have to worry about taking my shower down there either because I always double disinfect my shower stall.

   Once when I told one of the campers that I never thought I would be cleaning restrooms she said that she had been a flight attendant and that was part of their duties.  So I guess even some job I   thought was glamorous has it’s drawbacks. So for the moment I am reduced to cleaning restrooms but I envision the day when that will not be part of my duties.  In the meantime if that’s what I have to do to live for “free” and see all of the beautiful sights I guess it is a small price to pay.