Given I couldn’t get a flight early enough to get me home so that I could unpack, repack, and get back to the airport, combined with my lack of faith in the airlines being able to get luggage back on schedule when it really counts, I opted to stay in Richmond tonight and leave for the ASEE conference in Hawaii from here tomorrow. So, what to do with the day?

I went to Fredericksburg and toured the battleground and cemetery. With all of the houses that have been built and the growth of the trees, it was difficult to get an appreciation of the terrain facing the soldiers of the Civil War. The cemetery was impressive and even more impressive when you realize that there were some 15,000 plus soldiers, many unknown, buried there.

There were the requisite canons placed here and there and even though I’ve seen more than I can remember, I still felt compelled to take a photo or two.

Much of the stone wall has been rebuilt over the ages, but there is still a section of the original which remains. I also walked along Telegraph Road, now known as “Sunken Road”. It was from this road, behind the stone wall, that the Confederate soldiers repelled the Union.

Usually I do not like having tour guides for things like this because they tend to either be too canned, or to have too little knowledge to be useful. Today was an exception though. The historian we had as our guide was a former Park Ranger who was not only very knowledgeable about the site; she made a dramatic impression that conveyed the feelings of the battle rather than just the facts. The best tour I have had was of Gettysburg while at a National Defense University class, but that was given my a staff member of the college who was very knowledgeable about that battle.