Shiloh and STL

After spending Sunday night in Saint Louis, Bobblehead and I returned from our whirlwind trip to the South yesterday. I did not want to blog on Day 3 because the Hilton in downtown STL was dickish enough to charge a “nominal fee” for wireless Internet access. I was also dead tired after Day 2 and decided only to post a pic from our visit to the Shiloh National Military Park.

All in all, it was a fun and worthwhile trip. The highlight was definitely Saturday at Shiloh.

I did not know what to expect from the park and anniversary experience. A few days before departing IC, I called the visitor’s office for advice; a ranger told me they were expecting thousands and that we should get there “as early as possible.” Yikes. Though Bobblehead and I were afraid the park would be jammed with tourists and Civil War buffs, we left Memphis around 10 and even stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel before leaving the city. We leisurely sped our way across Northern Mississippi along US 72. After gassing up in Corinth, we drove east another 30 or so miles and crossed the border into Alabama just to say we have been in the Yellowhammer State. (I literally turned around and headed back to Mississippi after a half mile or less.) Back in Corinth we tried our best to navigate the poorly signed city streets (the street names were posted vertically on barely readable white stakes), passed the National Cemetery (located in a poor and derelict black neighborhood), visited the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center (a very nice place, and totally free), and then headed out to the country to see Battery F, an earthwork built by Union troops. Only after icing down our beer and checking into the hotel did we head to Shiloh at around 3 pm. So much for arriving as early as possible.

Thankfully, the park was not crowded at all when we arrived. Cars were parked along the lanes and visitors were walking around, taking pictures of the monuments and markers. With a handy map we navigated the park to visit a number of monuments and sites: a Confederate burial trench (complete with the “Stars and Bars” flying above), the reproduction of Shiloh Church, the Sunken Road, the Hornet’s Nest, the Bloody Pond, the Peach Orchard, and finally the Iowa Monument and cemetery.

The park was beautiful and serene — a complete contrast to the vicious bloodshed that took place 150 years before. (Our visit coincided with the sesquicentennial of the battle’s second day, which paled in comparison to the carnage on April 6.) The timber was thick and choked with underbrush in places. I was amazed that any kind of fighting took place there; it would have been very disorienting. In their diaries, many Shiloh veterans wrote about the air being thick with woodchips and shredded leaves, byproducts of the musket and cannon crossfire. Large informative plaques marked the location of headquarters and units at pivotal points. Smaller state monuments, dedicated to individual units, peppered the trails and battlegrounds. We found a number of the large, unostentatious Iowa monuments; there were a couple near the Hornet’s Nest, where Iowa units defended their position for hours on the first day before being overwhelmed by the Confederate attack. Being there was both cool and sobering.

Around 5 o’clock we parked at the visitor’s center and walked to the Iowa Monument (the tallest in the park), Pittsburg Landing (where troops disembarked the many steamboat transports), and the cemetery. We hung around the main area while the “Grand Illumination” started. Each of Shiloh’s 23,746 casualties were honored with a luminary. They surrounded each plaque and monument and lined the park’s roads. Neither of us knew exactly what to expect, but we soon found out that the rangers had turned the park’s road system into a giant one-way street and everyone needed to drive through the entire park to leave. After playing around with Bobblehead’s badass Canon and allowing what I thought was the majority of the park’s visitors to leave, we joined the Illumination tour. There were a number of bottlenecks as people stopped to take pictures, and a hour and a half later we finally reached the exit and headed back to our hotel in Corinth. The Grand Illumination was very poignant and thoughtful, and it was incredible to see the luminaries filling the Peach Orchard and ringing the Bloody Pond, but crawling through traffic sucked. I do not know how else they could have done it, but I suppose it was the least we could do to honor those who fought there, especially the ones who never left.

Back in Corinth we dined at a Waffle House and can now knowingly nod our heads when listening to “Bad Touch” by Bloodhound Gang (“I want you smothered, want you covered, like my Waffle House hash browns”).

The next day we said goodbye to the Dirty South and drove to Saint Louis. I had never been to Saint Louis and we decided that spending the night there would be a good way to break the return trip into manageable parts. We booked a room at the Hilton at the Ballpark across from Busch Stadium for $61 on Hotwire. “Apparently,” Bobblehead said, “nobody wants to stay in downtown Saint Louis.”

Bobblehead was more right than he knew: downtown Saint Louis was completely dead. There was a small crowd at the Arch and the park when we toured it, but only a couple bums and tourists populated the rest of the city center. It was like driving through a ghost town. However, it was Easter Sunday so everything was closed and everybody was spending the day at home gorging on candy. We drove to the Schlafly Tap Room and found it closed, so we checked into the hotel and wandered around for a restaurant. Nothing was open except for a few places and we ended up eating at an Irish bar called Tigin. It was pretty pricy but well worth it.

Overall I cannot say I formed much of an impression of Saint Louis, especially since it was a religious holiday and I stayed there one night. The downtown looks like it is dead except for Busch Stadium and a small restaurant and bar district north of the Arch. For Bobblehead, though, Saint Louis is an enigma. People tell him Saint Louis is full of awesomeness, but one has to know where to look. He has no clue where to look. Where are all your cool things hiding, Saint Louis? And are they open on Easter Sunday? I will say the Arch was really cool. I did not expect much but was awestruck when I was next to it.