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.