Here We Move Again - Cooper's Furnace

A couple of months have expired since the last post.  Christmas and New Year were spent driving the 1.5 hour trip to the kids house many, many times.  I'm afraid to even calculate all the diesel we burned.  One of the trips was to stay for several days and baby/dog/house sit.  We had a blast doing that.

But now it is near the end of February and we are moving to our volunteer position at Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area.  Generally speaking, we are moving from Carollton, GA to Cartersville, GA, right at about an hour's drive.  The back roads that we have been using to get to the kids' house are not going to work for moving the rig.  They are just too small and draped over with low hanging tree branches.  We'll have to take the dreaded I-20/I-285/I-75 route.  These roads are always choked with traffic even on a good day and lately there have not been many good days because of heavy construction.

The job at Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area is set to be our easiest gig yet.  We'll have a place to stay from the end of February until December with a 4-day on 4-day off schedule.  If we are on during a weekday we only have to be there to open the gate in the morning and close it again at night.  If we are on during a weekend then there are just a few hours in the gatehouse to go along with the gate opening/closing routine.  No maintenance to do, no bathrooms to clean, no mowing to be done (by us).  We just have to be "present" for security and to answer visitor questions about the Etowah River.  Sweet!

Dropping anchor at the entrance to Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area

You can't see it in the picture above but our RV pad is a double site.  There is room for a second rig that will be our co-hosts for the season.  Only right now the people that were supposed to come have dropped out of the program and the volunteer coordinator is scrambling to find somebody to fill in.  Since the park does not open for another 10 days we have the place to ourselves.  We are one mile inside the locked gate and have solitude like never before.

This is a really great set-up.  We are on a large pad with picnic tables, lamp poles and paved patio.  All this is situated alongside the Etowah River but the brush is so thick we can't see it, even with it being winter and all the leaves dropped off.  We can hear it, just can't see it. Cell phone signals are non-existent down in this river valley and our satellite dish is just barely getting enough of a beam to tune in a few channels.  When the leaves start coming in that will be all she wrote for TV.  However I did notice a pole across the road that I am pretty sure the previous hosts were using for their satellite dish.  We'll have to check into getting the equipment we need to go that route.

But for now we're enjoying the moment.  While it is the most solitude we have ever had we are by no means in a remote area.  In just five minutes we can be in the town of Cartersville where they have all the essentials such as Walmart, Publix, Kroger (with attractive diesel prices) and a Sonic Drive-In.  Everything a fulltimer could need.  Plus, we are now only thirty minutes from the grand baby.  I hope they don't get tired of seeing us.

It's Only a Quarter Mile but We Have Moved

Finally!  A spot has come open in the full hook-up section of Little Talapoosa Park.  It is the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend and we have been given the green light to vacate our equestrian site and occupy a paved site with power, water and yes, sewer!

Now the challenge is to get packed, hitched and moved while on crutches.  But it has been nine weeks since the break and John is about to be released for using a walking cast.  He's already been driving left footed for the last month.  We won't be as fast as usual but we'll get it done.

Our new digs for the next several weeks.

Little Talapoosa Park is a very nice park with groomed walking/biking trails, some even paved, and our new campsite fits right in.  It is spacious and level with a view out our rear picture window looking into a mixed woods of conifers and hardwoods.  While the site is mostly clear of trees directly above and to our forward position, there are a couple of trees off to the side that are directly in line of our satellite signal.  Luckily the one that is most in line is a hardwood and it is beginning to drop its leaves.  We got enough of a signal that the dish could align with the satellite but our higher channels are pretty pixelated.  Every time the wind blows and knocks a few more leaves off our picture gets better.  It should be perfect by mid-December.

Our attention is now turning to the coming Christmas holiday and the volunteer job we are lining up with the Corps of Engineers.  We have been accepted as Day Use Park Attendants at a Corps of Engineers facility on the Etowah River.  This river park is literally at the bottom of the dam to Lake Allatoona in north Georgia.  Our duties at this place will be the most minimal we have done at any volunteer position, only opening and closing one gate each day we are on duty (4 days on, 4 days off) and sitting in a gate house for a few hours if our duty falls on a weekend.  We have been told we can move into the park on or about Feb 20th.  While this is about the easiest volunteer duty we have ever pulled, it is even better because we are only thirty minutes away from the grand baby.

In a Holding Pattern

Weeks have gone by since the last posting.  Halloween has come and gone and the days are cooler and there is a faint tinge of color in the leaves.  It is close enough to Thanksgiving to start thinking about the holiday meal shopping list.  Time to scout out where we can get a smoked turkey.

Still on crutches but the good thing is that John's arms and shoulders are getting buff.  Getting out and doing things is a little easier now that some stamina has been built up.  Orthopedist visits have been positive in that everything seems to be healing correctly and that no surgery will be required.  Whew!

Yet we still wait.  Wait for the healing process and wait for a an RV site to become available so that we can move out of the equestrian loop and into the full hook up loop.  We've been told by a gate attendant that after Thanksgiving it was looking promising for some of the long-term contractors to be moving on.  We'll keep our fingers crossed.  This paying someone to come and vacuum out our tanks is getting old, and expensive.  On their last visit the driver informed us that they would be doubling their fee and cutting their schedule in half.  Beginning December 1st they would only be coming once every two weeks.  Lucky for us that we have tanks large enough that we were already at once every two weeks but our fellow campers out here in the equestrian section are not equipped the same.  They are going to have to start practicing some extreme conservation.

Being laid up and not doing any hiking or sight-seeing there are no pictures for this post.  Well, I do have lots and lots of grand baby pics but nobody wants to see those except us.

Maybe the next post will be more interesting.

Big Gulp Bites the Dust Again!

It is October the 10th (2016) and 11 days since I (John) broke my foot.  Thank goodness for comfortable recliner chairs in our RV.  They are an upgrade/present we gave ourselves back in the spring.  There is no way that the factory installed recliners would have tolerated my eighteen hours a day of being leaned back with my leg elevated on a mound of blankets and pillows.

Regardless of how comfortable my recliner is, that is a lot of time on one's backside and I am getting a little stir-crazy.  Cyndee was needing to go grocery shopping and I was determined to get out and go with her.  I can manage the crutches getting to and from Big Gulp (our truck) but I am going to make use of the electric carts once we get to Walmart.  The inside of that place is just too many square feet for me to walk on my hands.

It is a bright, beautiful, fall day as we exit Little Talapoosa Park and point Big Gulp in the direction of our destination in Carrollton, GA, about 5 miles away.  We got stopped at the first red light inside the city limits and after a brief wait for the green, Cyndee stepped on the accelerator and....nothing.  Big Gulp kind of sputtered and coughed but there was no rise in rpm's and no movement forward.  Oh boy, here we go again.

The 6.0 litre engine that was put in Ford trucks the year ours was built have been an absolute disaster.  The list of things that fail (again and again) is as long as your arm.  We have had multiple head gaskets fail, multiple turbo-charger rebuilds, all eight fuel injectors have been replaced at least twice each, and the exhaust gas return cooler ruptured once.  With the exception of the turbo and fuel injectors all the other repairs require that the cab of the truck be taken off.  That is a specialized operation with specialized equipment for lifting the cab so the mechanic can get to the engine and so far Ford dealerships are the only place I have found that have the equipment and can do the work.

We know what the symptoms are for a variety of failures and today's failure is not familiar at all.  It would seem something new has found a way to break.  So it's on to our roadside emergency app to summon a large tow truck.  It took our service awhile to find a tow company nearby with a truck big enough to tow us but in about an hour and a half we were getting picked up.

Getting the driver, Cyndee, me and my crutches in the small cab of the tow truck was a pretty good trick but we finally found the right combination of positions to get the doors closed and we're on our way to the Carrollton Ford dealership.  While the driver was dropping the truck in a mechanic's bay we were at the service desk arranging for a rental car.

It was the next day when Ford called to tell what was wrong and get the go-ahead to do the repairs.  It seems that our exhaust gas return (EGR) valve had failed in the open position.  That means no air flow to the turbocharger which explains why nothing happened when the accelerator was stepped on.  Luckily this is a repair that could be done without taking the cab off.  Still didn't make it cheap or quick though.

We picked up our rent car and proceeded to get our grocery shopping done.  For the next week we are going to be zipping around in a small vehicle, burning gasoline instead of diesel.  Sounds like a good time to do a few trips to the kids' house about an hour and a half away.

Lucky Dog

It took five days after John broke his heel to get into to see the orthopedic surgeon.  But it turned out to be worth the wait.  In the those days of waiting with the foot elevated and confined in a half-cast the heel bone settled into a good position.

Another set of full X-rays by the orthopedist showed that the heel bone was intact, completely broke off but intact.  And it had moved itself into perfect position to heal naturally without having to be screwed together.  The orthopedist said I was one of the lucky few that this happens to as well over 90% of these fractures require the placement of multiple screws to pull the heel into proper alignment.  I'll take my luck and run with it.

Not having to have surgery was the end of the good luck.  I was still going to have to wear a cast and absolutely put no weight on my foot for a minimum of 10 weeks.  Being on crutches for almost 3 months doesn't exactly fit in the plans of an active fulltimer, but there is nothing that can be done about it, like I have said in many posts before, the one thing a fulltimer must be good at is flexibility in their plans.  We are going to get a chance to practice that in a big way now.

Traded in the old-school cast for this high-tech boot cast.
It has an air bladder that you pump up and it locks everything in place.

And another thing, the doctor said no driving for me.  I can understand that if I were medicated but I have not taken anything stronger than a Tylenol since they gave me a pain shot the day I broke my foot.  It is my right foot, I can just stick it across the transmission hump of the truck and drive left footed.  I've done it for 22 weeks combined on my last two stints on crutches, I can do it again.  Cyndee is not on board with that thinking.

Something I have not written about in previous posts is our research for a volunteer job in proximity to our daughter's new house.  We found, applied for and got a volunteer position at a day use area on the Etowah River just below the dam to Lake Alatoona.  It was only 30 minutes from our daughter's and was a very simple job, just opening and closing the gates each day and a few hours in an information booth on weekends.  We can move our rig into the host site near the end of February so that is why we had been looking for long term parking upon our arrival in Georgia in September.  John should be walking without crutches by then but the doctor did say that it would be a minimum of a year before the foot would be fully healed.

Now it is just a matter of John sitting with his foot elevated while bones mend.  It is going to be a long, boring winter.

Moving Day - Ouch!

We got ourselves packed up and moved from Chattahoochee Bend State Park in Newnan, GA to Little Talapoosa Park in Carrollton, GA.  The drive took less time than it did to break camp and then set up again at the new spot.  We are in place just one day before we will be very busy with the movers while the kids are doing a double closing down in the middle of Atlanta.

Our campsite in the equestrian section is very large and despite being nothing but dirt and a little gravel, it is pretty nice.  It is spacious and widely spaced from the campsites on either side of us.  It did require a number of boards under our rear jacks to get things leveled out as there was a front to back slope on the whole site.  They removed a huge number of trees to build the equestrian sites so we have a clear shot at the satellites.  We'll have to get after the locating of a septic pumping service, aka honey wagon, since there is no sewer or dump station.

Back to helping the kids.  We will be coordinating the movers at the new house.  The timing on this thing is tight, they are doing the double-close on both houses and the buyers are requiring immediate possession of their old house which means they have a moving truck full of their possessions with nowhere to go for the night but will be at the new house first thing in the morning.  So while the kids are downtown signing about a thousand pages of legal documents we will be at the new house directing the movers on where to put things.

But for this afternoon we are going to explore our new environment and do a little shopping.  Again we sample some local fare, a Bar-B-Que dive.  Yes, it was good and no we have not been able to get back to clean eating.

Walmart, Kroger and Publix were all located and our fridge is now crammed full.  We're set for at least two weeks.  It's off to bed and an early rise tomorrow.

September 27, 2017

Moving day.  We are trying to find our way to Marietta, GA via back roads because using I-20 to I-285 to I-75 is simply not do-able.  Those roads are so crammed with throngs of vehicles and accidents that it is impassable a great deal of the time.  We are going to figure out a way to thread our way through the rural towns and suburbs.  It is going to be a lot of turns and a lot of lights but we should arrive alive.

Our first attempt got us there in an hour and fifteen minutes, less than half the time it would have taken if we had stayed at Chattahoochee Bend.  We're good with that.  Now we have to get that moving truck unloaded.

The new house came with a small barn/large shed in the back yard.  Our son-in-law custom makes knives and he has forges a hammer mill plus an anvil and a large assortment of hand tools for metal and leather working.  We're talking lots of equipment.

I was inspecting the shed and putting together a game plan for where to put everything.  The shed had hip roof that allowed for the rafters to be sheathed and used as a second floor, so long as you don't need to stand up straight.  There was a make-shift ladder that the previous owner had left in place.  I suppose for getting down his stuff on the move out.  I wanted to see if everything was cleared out and just how much room there was for putting the kids' stuff in.  I put my right foot on the second rung of the ladder and was in the process of lifting my left foot up to the third rung when things went crash, bang, boom.

The next thing I knew I was picking myself up off the floor, a little dazed but okay except for that searing pain in my ankle.  Well, crap, I've twisted my ankle.  It is not the first time, it will be inconvenient for a time but I'll get along.  But right now I need to get back to the house and get some ice on this thing to keep the swelling down.

Funny thing, as I hobbled back to the house the heel of my foot felt "squishy".  I thought maybe the swelling was already setting in so I made my way to the house and got it elevated and iced.  I set myself up in the driveway in a lawn chair with my foot propped up on the back of another chair and directed the movers between the shed, basement and house.  Once a load got in the house Cyndee took over on placement. After a couple hours of elevation the pain and swelling were getting worse.  It seems that I may have something more than a sprained ankle.

Cyndee called our son to come over after he got off work so he could take me to the local urgent care office.  She would have done it but someone had to stay with the movers, plus I needed somebody strong enough to be a crutch because now I could not let my foot touch the ground.

Long story short, the medical term for my injury was a displaced calcaneus fracture.  The simple description is that I broke my heel clean off!  The X-rays looked pretty gruesome.  They spent two hours after getting the X-rays deciding whether to have emergency surgery to put pins and screws in it tonight or if it could wait till the next day.  Ultimately they decided it could wait.  They put me in a half-cast, gave me a set of crutches and sent me home for the night.

A half-cast and wrapped in Ace bandages will
hold me until I can get to the orthopedic surgeon.

This is not my first time on crutches so I was able to motor right on out of the urgent care office and negotiate uneven surfaces and stairs without a lot of angst.  But because of the injection I got for pain there was going to be no driving for me.  Looks like Cyndee and I will be reversing rolls for awhile, she'll drive and I'll navigate....just as soon as my eyes quit rolling back in my head.

Georgia - Are You Kidding Me?!

Our trip from Alabama to Georgia today (about Sept. 21, 2016) maps out to be right at 4 hours.  We have picked a campground that takes campers by the month.  We are anticipating that we will be around for awhile helping the kids with the move to their new house.  Once they get settled in then we will head out on the I-95 corridor for some Fall leaf-peeping and then return again for the Holidays.

We turn onto the road that leads to our campground and are greeted by large signs saying; "Low Area, Prone to Sudden Flooding".  We move ahead thinking that perhaps the campground is built on elevated ground but were shocked to find that it was even in a lower spot than than the warning signs.  We pulled into the campground and found no obvious office and after sitting in the entrance for some time, were not greeted by anyone either.  We did our own drive-thru and saw that this campground was not suitable for our purposes and that it was time to execute plan B.

Cyndee placed a call to the state park that we were camp hosts for, Chattahoochee Bend, and asked if they had any spots open.  The reply was; "Surrrre, come on down".  It was not ideal as this location was going to be an hour and a half further south than we needed to be but at least we knew it was a good place and we would be able to use the the free-night passes we had earned as volunteers.  We'll set up camp there for a few days and see if we can scope out a different campground in the north suburbs of Atlanta.  The goal being to get into a campground that allows extended stays, is in the northern arc of Atlanta and has full hook-ups.

Chattahoochee Bend State Park

What we thought would be a fairly easy thing to do turned out to be nearly impossible.  We could not find a single campground with more than one or two nights anywhere.  We drove nearly 300 miles trying to find something, anything but it was not to be.  The story was the same everywhere we went, with the construction of a new football stadium, a new baseball stadium and the massive road improvements being done to accommodate those giant venues, everything was bursting at the seams with contractors.  There were waiting lists a mile long at all the campgrounds north of I-285.

Okay, time for plan C.  Again, from our time at Chattahoochee Bend we knew of a campground in Carrollton, GA that we would recommend to people when our campground was full.  Little Talapoosa is a county operated park and allows long-term stays during the off-season.  It appeared ideal for our purposes with the exception that it was almost all the way to the Alabama/Georgia state line.  It will still be over an hours drive to our daughter's new house but at least we won't have to drive through the city to get there.

Little Talapoosa County Park

Little Talapoosa is a relatively new park.  It's 256 acres of campground, trails, woods, lake and river.  The campground is divided into two loops, one for full hook-up RV's and the other for tents with the tent loop having a large bath house and laundry facility.  It is a gorgeous park and if it were not so far away from where we wanted to be, it would be perfect.  But only minutes after arriving we discovered that even campgrounds more than an hour commute to all the construction, they too were full of contractors.  After some discussion we were at least put on a waiting list, which was way better than anywhere else we had been.

Before heading back to Chattahoochee bend we made a pit stop at the tent loop bath house where maintenance people were doing the daily mopping, cleaning and disinfecting.  It turns out that the "workers" were county jail inmates, black and white striped pants and all.  One of them was a chatty fellow and had obviously been doing work at the campground for awhile because when we told him of our dilemma he immediately told us that we really needed to talk to the park manager.  It seems that they had just completed work on installing 10 RV sites in what was to be their equestrian loop.  Everything was dirt and gravel and there were no sewer connections but they did have 50 amp power and good water.

Just as we were getting in our truck to go back to the office, the chatty fellow saw a vehicle in the distance and started waving it over to us.  It was the park manager and he went out to her and had a short conversation upon which she got out of her truck and approached us.  After introductions she said that while the equestrian loop was not finished, we were welcome to a long-term stay while we waited to come up on the wait list for a full hook-up RV site.  Sold!  We jumped on the offer like a chicken on a June Bug.

The caveat was that in addition to not having a sewer connection, the park also had no dump station.  We were going to have to find a honey wagon service and pay to have our tanks pumped out.  We crossed our fingers that there was such a service in the area and put down a months rent starting the next day.  We made a bee-line back to Chattahoochee Bend and started prepping for the move tomorrow.

Just Passing Through

Our kids have firm closing dates for the house they selling and the one they are buying.  We are needing to get ourselves to Georgia so we can help them out on moving day.  So today we are going to cut our distance in half between where we are and our destination in Georgia.  This will land us in Cottondale, Alabama for the night.  No sight-seeing to do but we will probably sample the local fare instead of cooking for ourselves.

We've been sampling the local fare a lot lately and it is taking its toll.  Shirts are tight, pants won't button.  We're going to have to get our eating back on plan or it won't be long before nothing but sweatpants will fit.

We are coming up on the end of September and it is still hot.  Luckily our campground for tonight (Sunset Travel Park) is another one with good power.  Both A/Cs are going full blast trying to keep things cool.  This summer has been one for the books, everywhere we have been all summer long local record high temperatures were being broken every day.  We are not ones to want to rush into winter but this year's heat does have us fondly thinking of temperatures that require coats.

The little berg of Cottondale is an unincorporated community southwest of Birmingham, Al.  Its reason for existence is the cotton mill.  Just not much here except for our campground.  We're turning in early with our anticipation of getting to Georgia tomorrow and seeing the kids.

Crossing the Mississippi River and American History, mid-19th Century

On our outbound journey from Georgia in June (2016) we skipped our planned stop in New Orleans for some tours of historical interest because of all the mechanical issues we had associated with two blow-outs on the trailer.  The days spent on getting repairs done ate up our time we had planned for New Orleans not to mention our desire to "play".  Our destination for today gives us the opportunity to make up for this a little bit.  We are going to call Vicksburg, Mississippi home for the next couple of nights.

We didn't plan it but it is working out that to get to today's destination it fits perfectly within our four hour per day driving window.  We have another private campground picked out because of its convenient location to things we want to do.  Magnolia RV Park Resort will be home for the next couple nights.

And a favorite thing for John is that we get to cross a Mississippi River bridge today.  Not so much for Cyndee.  Essentially all bridges are too narrow, too high and too long for her.  But she does like seeing them from a distance.

Interstate 20 crosses the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, MS

Our chosen RV park for this stopover is Magnolia RV Park Resort.  After our very pleasant experience at Shady Pines in Texarkana we had expectations for Magnolia RV.  After being RV campers for the past fifteen years we should have known better.  And sure enough, it was not what was advertised.  In addition to writing this blog we also write campground reviews on RVParkReviews.com.  Rather than re-hash it, here is an excerpt of our review:

"This is no resort. However it is a an okay RV park. Park owner?/manager was very accommodating and made himself very accessible. To get my Escapees discount the payment for my one night stay was cash only. All sites are packed gravel with a thin strip of grass between you and your neighbor. Your "patio' is your neighbors utility connections. Power was solid with no voltage dips despite the campground being packed full and temperatures above 90 degrees with A/Cs running full blast. Water pressure okay and sewer connection was in good shape. Wifi was good until late evening when everybody was online, their system just couldn't handle all the traffic and connections were dropped and not able to be reaquired. Verizon signal was good for jetpack and voice calls. My site was a very convenient pull through, fairly level with no tree obstructions for satellite. However it was not big enough to hold both my 5th wheel and truck when disconnected. I asked, and got permission, to park my truck perpendicular across the driveway in order not to hang out into the very narrow road in front of me. If a campground in the Vicksburg area was my destination I would probably pick one of the nearby state parks or COE facilities for a multi-night stay or camping experience. But if passing through as I am, this RV park works."

Vicksburg is Old South.  The area has been settled by Native American tribes for thousands of years with the Natchez being the primary tribe since the beginning of recorded history.  The French built a fort in 1719 and conducted trade and fur trapping but by 1729 they were mostly killed out by Natchez raids.  But after allying with the Choctaw, traditional enemies of the Natchez, the French were able to defeat and dispurse the Natchez and their allies, the Yazoo.  Regardless, the French colony never recovered and the Choctaw took over the area by right of conquest and controlled the land for several decades.

A permanent settlement took hold in 1798 and things were pretty copacetic until the American Civil War.  Vicksburg was the epicenter of a battle for control of the Mississippi River, this was the last game piece for the Union to have complete control of the river.  But Vicksburg had a near impenetrable defense atop a high bluff on the river.  So instead of taking on an impossible battle the Union Army laid siege to Vicksburg with the intent to starve them out.  And on July 4, 1863 they achieved their goal after 47 days.  With the surrender of Vicksburg and the defeat of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg the day before, historically marked this as a turning point in favor of the Union.

The memorial of the siege is what we have come to see.  The National Park System operates the memorial, actually the Vicksburg National Military Park.  

Entrance to the 16 mile driving tail at Vicksburg National Military Park.

This place is pretty big, encompassing 1,325 monuments, 20 miles of historic trenches and earthworks, a 16 mile tour road, and a 12.5 mile walking trail.  We didn't have an endless amount of time so we focused on a few of the more prominent memorials.  One of the first that got us out of the truck was the Illinois Memorial, a large Romanesque structure.

There are 47 steps leading to the Illinois Memorial, one for each day of the siege.

Seal in the floor of the rotunda.

Cyndee gives a little scale to the place.

The Wisconsin Monument also caught our eye.

Lots of action in this bronze sculpture.

Ulysses S. Grant

Recently the park has added an exhibit of the ironclad U.S.S. Cairo.  It was reclaimed from the muddy waters of the Mississippi and what was left after more than a hundred years of being submerged was reassembled in a permanent dry dock on the grounds of the Vicksburg National Military Park.  

U.S.S. Cairo Exhibit

The museum is built into the side of a hill, adjacent to the exhibit.

You can't see it from my pictures, but the exhibit can be entered.  You can go onboard and explore the main deck and look into below-deck areas.

Our home state of Texas has erected monument with bronze statuary.

 As mentioned in previous posts, we have been doing genealogy on both of our families for many years.  As we have developed deeper and deeper connections in each of our blood lines we have been amazed at the similar migratory path our ancestors took as they landed on the east coast and moved west over a century's time.  Not only did our families pass through the same states in the same years, they also lived in the same or adjacent counties.  We keep joking that if we continue our research we might find out that we are cousins.

A prominent figure in Cyndee's line (prominent in regards to there being quite a bit written about him) is her 4X great uncle, Arthur Exum Reynolds, Colonel 26th Miss. Infantry.  He was a commander of a brigade during the Siege of Vicksburg and is one of hundreds that has an individual monument erected in his name.

Much of the historical ground of the siege is outside the National Park boundaries but places are set aside and monuments erected none the less.  Col. Reynolds' monument is one that is on the outside.  We got a map of monuments from the park service and found our way to a road just outside the park boundaries.  Finding the monument was easy, finding a place to park not so much.  But we did find a spot that was almost big enough for the truck and pulled in long enough to walk to the monument and get a couple of pictures.

That's Col. Reynolds' monument in the distance as seen from our parking spot.

Arthur E. Reynolds
Col. 26th Miss. Infantry
Commanding Brigade Loring's Division
Red Granite with Bronze Plaque

Seeing all the history, especially with a family connection, was pretty nice.  But we are heading back to the campground and start preparations for travel on the morrow.