Okay, 5 months later, let’s keep talking about last summer’s national park quest. 😂
On my way to Atlanta I stopped at Ocmulgee National Monument, which was one of those unexpectedly awesome sites where I wanted to stay much longer. I always wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. (And honestly, the way teaching has been lately, I’m wondering if it’s too late in life for a career change). I’ve been to some other mound sites, and I hate to say this, but they were not exactly thrilling. I think Effigy Mounds in Iowa would have been better to see from the air, but the mound site in Ohio... I mean, it’s just mounds. So why was Ocmulgee so fascinating to me?? Who knows, maybe it just had a certain kind of energy. They also had lots of interesting artifacts and this earth lodge you could go in. The floor was 1000 years old.
Next up was Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, north of Atlanta. This was a popular recreation site; lots of bikers. This is something I’ve noticed about all the battlefields- the locals use them to bike and walk their dogs. I was just talking to my friend the other day about how, the longer it’s been, the more the tragedy of an event fades from public consciousness. When I visited the Flight 93 Memorial, people were somber. Many of us cried in the museum. As we walked out to the crash site, I heard a man telling his son to be respectful because we were walking on people’s graves. At Pearl Harbor, my friend went on a tour led by a man who had been a child at the time of the bombing and was able to describe the feelings and experiences of the locals, and everyone on the tour felt impacted by that firsthand knowledge. But on the Civil War battlefields, there’s a disconnect. A few years ago, I experienced “Ford Family Fun Day” at Gettysburg, complete with balloon animals and face painting. I can’t imagine casually walking my dog and picking up its poop, on the site of the Flight 93 plane crash. But I guess it’s good that the positive energy is replacing the negative energy of these places.
I don’t know why, but my favorite artifact was this handmade sock.
I appreciated this sign that reminded people to be aware of what happened at this site.
Last stop of the day was the Martin Luther King NHS, and I didn’t spend a lot of time there because I’d already been there years ago, and there were some really annoying kids running around and being very disrespectful, so I couldn’t concentrate on what I was reading.
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