Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and Wilson's Creek, Missouri- Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Not going to blog today because it's already 11:00 and we just arrived at the hotel.  All is well.  We will catch up with the blog tomorrow.

We went to two battlefields- Pea Ridge in Arkansas and Wilson's Creek in Missouri.  After that we drove as far as we could towards home.  

Now we're in Effingham, Illinois, Effing. Ham. We have about 9 or 10 hours left to drive tomorrow.

**** Update:
Scott was awakened by shaking this morning and in his hazy, still-half-asleep state, he thought it was a mild earthquake.  He checked later and there was a 3.1 earthquake at about the right time in Solomon, Kansas.   Is that something he could feel here in Arkansas?  We don't know.  Maybe it was just "the monsters."

Today's touring covered two Civil War battlefields- the battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas and the battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.  Both are National Military Parks, run by NPS, and they are only about an hour and a half drive apart.  Both are very early war battles.  Scott and at least one park ranger pointed out that we did them in the wrong order.  The battle at Pea Ridge, which we were near and did first, happened on March 7-8, 1862.  The Battle of Wilson's Creek, which we did second, happened in August of 1861.  Both of these battles were fought over the future of Missouri, and Franz Sigel, the German-American general, played a prominent role in both.

Before the Battle of Wilson's Creek, Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon had been pushing the rebel forces out of Missouri in his aggressive manner.  "I would see.. every man, woman, and child in the state dead and buried [for defying the federal government]," Lyons had said earlier that summer. "This means war."  He met a larger rebel force in the area around Wilson's Creek.  Franz Sigel, then a colonel, convinced Lyon to split his force in an attempt to surprise and surround the rebels.  Sigel took a brigade and managed to drive the rebel forces back with artillery, but he was eventually surprised by a bigger Confederate force.  Lyon's force also suffered major losses.  Lyon became the first Union general to be killed in the war, and the Union forces withdrew.

The intensity of the fight at Wilson's Creek caused the federal government to pay more attention to Missouri.  The Confederates regrouped their forces from Missouri in Arkansas and attempted to push the "occupying" federal army out of Missouri.  The rebels attacked a force of Union troops near the hamlet of Leetown and a nearby tavern called Elkhorn Tavern, in what would become the Battle of Pea Ridge.  The Confederates initially beat the federal forces in the first day of the battle, March 7th, 1862, but the federal forces came in with an enormous cannonade, directed by General Sigel, and a magnificent infantry charge.  The federal troops won the action on March 8th, and the battle is now called, "The Battle That Saved Missouri for the Union." Controlling Missouri was a key to controlling the Mississippi and its connecting waterways.

Both parks have a visitor's center, and at each there are films about the battles as well as small museums with artifacts, displays, and electric maps.  The films at each lasted almost a half-hour, and both were similar productions, probably done about the same time. The films were each framed by an actor playing an aging veteran who was remembering his time in the battles.  They then mainly used actors and re-enactors to portray scenes from the battle.  Both also featured music by Bobby Horton, which Scott immediately recognized.  Scott thought the casting for both Sigel and Lyon was excellent, even though they didn't say much.

Both parks then have one-way roads that loop around the park to a series of stops.  Pea Ridge was slightly longer- about 7 miles and 10 stops.  Wilson's Creek was 4.9 miles long with 8 stops.

We were a little frustrated at Pea Ridge because the workers there said they were taking inventory in the gift shop and couldn't sell us a CD to use for the auto-tour.  Scott was really disappointed to hear that because he has gathered quite a collection of these tours.  The park employees gave us a slip of paper with directions for a cell-phone tour, but it wasn't the same as having the souvenir.  It certainly didn't seem like they were taking inventory the right way if they have to shut down all sales to do it.  [We stopped again after taking the tour, and a different ranger took pity on Scott.  He not only let him get a CD, he gave him one for free.  It was probably one that they kept around as a loaner, but it was still very nice of him.] Emma had started out wearing dad's Civil War cap, and explored the Visitors Center after the movie.  A few stops into the tour, however, and she was napping in the back seat.

At Pea Ridge, there were several stops that stand out as notable.  The first stop actually didn't have anything to do with the Civil War, but was a remnant of the road that was used for the infamous Trail of Tears, a result of Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Policy that caused the displacement and even deaths of many of the Cherokee.  Stop #7 had a short walk to a dramatic overlook of the field that the Union forces charged over.  The shelter stands on the ridge, and behind large rock formations that a few unfortunate confederates tried to use to hide behind.  Today, a turkey buzzard was perched on those rocks, and he looked like he was posing for us.  Even without the bird, this was a great view of the battlefield.  Stop #8 was the Elkhorn Tavern, complete with a set of elk horns on the roof.  This building was a key location on the battlefield, and the location of much fighting as the battle swirled around it.  Two monuments also stand nearby here.  Stop #10 showed where General Sigel was directing the artillery, one target at a time, and causing a great deal of damage and havoc on the Confederate lines.  "Dat de shpot, Sergeant!" he said as he personally helped line up the sights of the guns.  The weather was nice this morning, with the sun shining and temperatures around 77.

After Pea Ridge, it was about an hour and a half drive into Missouri to go to Wilson's Creek.  We stopped at a Sonic along the way and had lunch.  It was getting warmer and was in the high 80s by the time we were done at the Visitor's Center.  Julie fell asleep during the movie and didn't even wake up when the movie had ended.

Julie and Scott agreed that the Pea Ridge battlefield was more fun to tour than Wilson's Creek.  A lot of the stops at Wilson's Creek were the heads of trails that you had to walk 3/4 of a mile on before you got to the "good stuff."  It was too hot for that- with the afternoon temperatures now in the high 80s.  Still, there were a couple of stops that stand out.  Stop #3 is the Ray House and its accompanying fields and outbuildings.  It is the only building remaining from the time of the battle.  John Ray was the postmaster of the area, and was a Unionist, even though he did own slaves.  From his front porch, John Ray watched the battle take place in his cornfield, while his wife and nine children, their slave and her four children, and one letter carrier huddled together in the basement for safety.  Scott liked the walk here, though Julie chose to rest in the car with Emma.  The "overlooks" were not as good as the one at Pea Ridge, but Scott did like stops #4 and #5, which showed where Sigel was trying to run his sneak attack.  He was quite successful in the first part of the attack as his artillery was effective at pushing the rebels back, but he lost his momentum and his force mistook attacking Confederates as a friendly force because the Union's 1st Iowa regiment also wore gray.  Sigel failed to follow through with the plan of his own making.  He would do much better at Pea Ridge.

Julie's favorite thing to do at battlefields is to look for animals.  There weren't many out in the heat today, but we did spot some.  A butterfly landed on Emma's arm outside of the visitors center at Pea Ridge.  Emma wanted to know how many "points" that was worth, and Scott ruled that it was worth 300 cow points.  In fact, there were many butterflies throughout both parks and they were of many different species.  At one point, at Wilson's Creek, Julie started to walk up some wooden steps and dozens of tiny butterflies flew out from underneath them.  She said it was magical.   There weren't many larger animals.  We spotted a small lizard with a fluorescent blue tail that was skittering across a sidewalk.  (It was the same kind of lizard that Anna had caught at Shiloh, back in 2011.)  There was a large turkey buzzard that was posing for us at a rocky overlook at Pea Ridge.  Julie spotted some deer in the tall grass of Wilson's Creek, and thinks she saw a turkey in the woods (the rest of us couldn't see it).  There is supposed to be a bear near the last stop of Wilson's Creek, but we didn't see him.  Julie and Scott were both spotting dead armadillos on the roads outside the parks in both Arkansas and Missouri.  We recognized them from our Texas trip last year, and apparently, they are common even this far north.

We started for home after we were done with the battlefield at Wilson's Creek.  After a very late dinner at Denny's (that got Julie a little sick), Julie suggested that we drive two more hours and stop for the night.  That put us in Effingham, Illinois, or as Scott and Emma keep calling it: Effing. Ham.  We've got between 9 or 10 hours of driving to go, plus we'll be losing an hour somewhere when we cross back to Eastern Time.  For now, we're still living on Tulsa Time.