tents tents and tents

jesus Christmas! I had no idea researching a tent would be so much work. There are only one hundred thousand features to consider and one hundred million tents to choose from. I've never bought a tent before and I want a tent that's going to do me for the future, not just this trip. Who's got help? (Jack I'm looking in your general direction here....)

what do other people think? well, i'll tell ya....

I've decided the third draft of the itinerary is the final draft. It cuts a few sites from the original two drafts, but there are many pros. I have more time at each site, only two days are scheduled for more than one site, I have plenty of time to check in and set up at each campground, and my last day is flexible: I can spend as little or as much time at Gettysburg as I please, which means I can get home to Phila as early or late as I feel like. And anyway, I've reserved all my campsites. Four state parks and two national. Two mountain ranges. Five states in six nights. Not bad.

I'm getting a wide variety of reactions from people when I tell them about this trip. My dad, the only person on earth I thought would think it was the greatest idea ever, well he doesn't seem to be much into it at all. Last spring I told him I thought I might take a trip to Istanbul, an idea to which he was vehemently opposed. When I told him about this trip, he said, "Can't you do something safer? Maybe you could go to Turkey." At least three people so far asked if they can come with, and one guy at work asked if he could film it (a drunken notion, therefore not quite a serious one). A woman I work with from the Pennsylvania Department of Tourism told me to take notes and seemed disappointed when I told her only one stop would be here in our fine state. Another woman at work, a younger woman, told me I'd better take a man along because she couldn't figure any other reason I'd go camping in the mountains for a week. The South Philly broads took some rather bawdy bets on whether I'd shack up for a night with a Southern gentleman, and Jack predicts I'll fall in love with a reenactor (he has a whole backstory for this scenario but it's just too much to go into here).

The best, though, are the two reactions I got from friends I didn't tell about it, friends who found it here on Blogger or maybe on Facebook. Tom Alberty said it was exactly the kind of trip he'd take if he had the "time, logistical wherewithal, and general camping savvy... say, didn't he command a Confederate army in Tennessee? General Camping Savvy? Hmmm? Look into that." (Sorry Tom, if you didn't want to be quoted, you shouldn't have put corny jokes in writing.) And Justin Fox linked to this blog on his own blog, Earth Minds Are Weak (check it out, it's pretty damn good, if you like bizarre and graphic independent comics), and titled the link "Bern At War."

So yeah, like I said, keep the feedback coming. I love it. I'm gearing up and I'm excited as hell.

Next steps: supply shopping and packing logistics.


xo

reserved

I made a reservation last night at a campsite in South Carolina that is simply beautiful. It's called Caesar's Head and it's in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which means I get some mountain time afterall. This means I'm really going, or else I'll lose the twelve dollars I put down. Teehee.

another possible itinerary

I'm beginning to think it might be useful to do my trip in the opposite direction. Jack noted that three hours is not enough time to see Gettysburg, in his opinion, and maybe he's right. What's more, I've planned two-three hours on several different battlefields and left the bulk of my driving to the end of the trip. The problem I see with this is that I'm going to get so damned tired by the end, that it could prove almost physically painful to spend the last two days in the car. What I think is maybe if I start by driving down the east coast, the driving will be more of an adventure than a drag. Furthermore if I plan Richmond for the first day instead of the last, I can get all that Confederate history for starters. I also think it might be prudent to cut some drive-time by skipping Fort Sumter altogether. What? Oh, I know. Skipping Sumter puts a giant historic hole in my plan. But maybe another time I can go to Sumter and Savannah and the Blue Mountains all in one shot. So here's the new tentative plan, beginning with Manassas and Richmond and ending in Gettysburg. This gives more leisure to my trip, though I spend a day and a half doing nothing but driving, but it also gives me a day and a half at the battle of Chickamauga and a night in the Great Smoky Mountains too. So here it is, itinerary draft 3.

Looking better.


[REDACTED, at recommendation of Pop]



This gives me two sites in Richmond, two battlefields (Gettysburg and Manassas), one battle (Chattanooga/Chickamauga), two general sites (Appomattox and Harper's Ferry), and two national parks.


Thanks for the feedback, and keep it coming.


xo

itinerary draft 2

Day 1:
depart 6am
arrive gettysburg 9am
depart gettysburg noon
arrive antietam 2pm
depart antietam 5pm
arrive greenbrier 5.30pm
camp

Day 2:
depart greenbrier 7.30am
arrive harper's ferry 8am
depart harper's ferry 10am
arrive manassas noon
depart manasses 3pm
arrive shenandoah 6pm
camp

Day 3:
depart shenandoah 7am
arrive appomattox 10am
depart appomattox 2pm
arrive stone mountain 6pm
camp

Day 4:
depart stone mountain 7am
arrive chickamauga noon
depart chickamauga 4pm
arrive cloudland 4.30pm
camp

Day 5:
depart cloudland 8am
arrive kennesaw 11am
marietta too and maybe commerce
arrive Hard Labor Creek State Park
camp

Day 6:
depart hard labor 8am
arrive ft. sumter 1pm
depart ft. sumter 4pm
arrive next campsite camp

Day 7:
depart campsite 9am
arrive philadelphia xxxafternoon



Okay so I realize it gets shady there at the end, and it also only gives me a few hours at Chickamauga. This all needs to be cleaned up. But it's better than the last one and I'm starting to develop some concept of how freaking long I'm going to be out there, how much driving, how if I don't have my directions all set down or if god forbid I get lost or detoured, I'm going to be a nervous wreck. Maybe I'll skip Kennesaw afterall—the website isn't promising much there and since it's not a real mountain it might not be worth it. Then I could spend an extra morning at Chickamauga, head up to Commerce maybe and then straight over to Sumter. Some of the car rental places offer GPS for an extra thirty bucks a day, which would nearly double my car rental allowance but might be worth it for the assurance of not getting lost. Maybe I'll spend the rest of the night on this, or one more day and then put it away for the weekend. It's a more daunting task than I'd originally imagined.

This whole idea started one day early spring, lunchtime, Sose and I took the bus down to Old City for a walk like we used to do when we worked at Gyro. We stopped in the Book Trader as we always used to, and I went to the travel section searching out books on Costa Rica. I stumbled across two books on the shelf, side by side. One was an ancient paperback, turns out it's a reprint of an even more ancient book, A Military History of the Civil War. The other was a National Geographic travel book on Civil War Battlefields. I knew instantly this would be my summer vacation. It was an inspiration of serendipity. I thought, romantically, that I could take a lazy drive through the middle South, touring the battlefields and then camping out in them. A battlefield a day. I had no idea that you can't actually camp in the battlefields. What a notion! What a mountain of misconception.

Now it's shaping into a challenge of the most personal kind. It seems the history is currently taking backseat to the mental challenge. Planning and plotting routes and researching campsites. And I know once all that's settled, once I've finalized my itinerary and made my car and camp reservations, I'll face a greater challenge still, and that'll be psyching myself up to really do it, really carry through. The planning numbs the reality. I think that will be the hardest part. Because spending a week by myself will be hard too, and I'm sure I'll hit snags and maybe it will rain or maybe a tent pole will break or a bear will come sniffing around my tent, and I expect I'll be exhausted and want to cry and maybe I will cry. But all that, that won't be as hard as getting in the car that first morning and leaving Philadelphia and knowing I'm about to embark on something so simple yet so absurd.

Okay. Back to the books.

Siting campsites

Today is State and National Parks day here at Red Tettemer. Well, here in the back corner of the studio. West Virginia State Parks are pretty frightening, Virginia's website blows, but Georgia has a fantastic DCNR site, almost as good as our Pennsylvania site. At any rate, I've found campsites near most of my stops now and can start looking more realistically at my schedule. I also got my time off "cleared," which means my boss wrote "go for it" in a response to my time off request email, but probably has no idea that he's done so.

In some ways I can't believe I have to wait two whole months to get this thing underway, although, on the other hand, I can't believe I only have two months to plan.

Needs:
a tent (haw!!)
an electric lantern, for reading and writing

Maybe I can add this list to the layout of the blog somewhere.

Oh, and check out the google maps link at the top right. I'm marking off my sites.

georgia

As it turns out, Kennesaw Mountain is not part of any mountain range, nor does it have a campsite in the immediate vicinity. The Blue Mountains are in the North of the state and pretty far out of my way, from Kennesaw to Sumter, so it looks like my night in Georgia will have to spent in a state park on a lake. So much for sleeping in the mountains.

already overwhelmed

I've been doing a little research here and there on sites to visit and drive times and events, but tonight I put together my first draft of an itinerary. Either I'm not going to sleep on this trip, or I'm only going to get to see a handful of sites. I already wish I had more time on this. Tonight's first draft looks like this:

Day 1:
depart 9am
arrive gettysburg noon
depart gettysburg 2pm
arrive antietam 4pm
camp

Day 2:
depart antietam 8am
arrive manassas 10am
depart manassas noon
arrive appomattox 4pm
camp

Day 3:
depart appomattox noon
arrive chickamauga 7pm
camp

Day 4:
chickamauga

Day 5:
depart chickamauga 8am
arrive kennesaw 10am
camp

Day 6:
depart kennesaw 8am
arrive savannah 1pm
camp

Day 7:
depart savannah 9am
arrive ft. sumter noon
depart ft. sumter 2pm

I really want to camp in the mountains of Georgia, thus the entire day spent in Kennesaw. Chickamauga is the reenactment day I've planned in, Manassas is the first battle, Sumter the first shot, and Appomattox of course the end. And I can't possibly skip Gettysburg or Antietam, but I'm going to have to skip something I think.

Car rental is going to cost just under 300. Gas I've hopefully overestimated at about the same. Food is going to consist of the bare basics: granola, trail mix, potatoes, a few cans of soup, and a handful of apples and bananas. A hundred bucks at best. Camping and park fees, another hundred. I think I'm looking at close to a thousand dollars here. Quite an expensive trip, so I'd better make the best of it, see all I can see. This trip I think will teach me well as much in the planning and execution as it will in what I learn about American history and myself.

Ken Burns part 1

First installment of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary. This is the start of my trip, I think. Last week I started trying to read the Military History of the Civil War, but the text is old and I can't follow it without some background. So I started on Ken Burns. And I learned my first new fact. A man named Wilmer McLean owned a farm in Manasses, Virginia, where the First Battle of Bull Run was fought on his property. He moved his family South to Appomattox County, where, four years later, Lee surrendered to Grant in McLean's living room. Ok. I'm ready to get ready for this thing.