Leaving our hotel after breakfast we headed north through Mississippi to our first stop, the Shiloh National Military Park just over the border in Tennessee. The park is the site of the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the early years of the Civil War. The visit starts at the visitors centre where a movie outlines the progress of the battle from the initial confederate gains through the arrival of union reinforcements and the subsequent rout of the southern forces.
Throughout the park are cannons from the battle together with colour coded signs indicating the position of the different sides in the conflict.
Over the course of the two-day battle some 24,000 troops were killed or wounded with the dead being buried in mass graves once the hostilities had ended. After the war was over the Union dead were moved to the National Cemetary on the site but the Confederate bodies were left in their mass graves. The cemetary is reminiscent of the huge WW1 graveyards in France with many of the graves un-named , a very moving experience.
We spent a short time looking around the battlefield …….
……including down by the banks of the Tennessee River where the troop reinforcements landed.
Leaving the park we started our journey to Nashville on some beautiful country roads passing through small communities with little traffic in sight.
That was soon to change as we hit the Interstate with large 18 wheeler trucks passing us at 70 mph or more on either side. The American roads do not seem to have service areas like we do in the UK so we stopped at a rest area and made ourselves a picnic.
After a further two hours we approached the outskirts of Nashville and the traffic really built up with road works and merging traffic adding to the jam. It at least gave us an opportunity to get a picture of the Nashville skyline.
Our hotel is situated in Music Valley, a little outside of the main downtown area but right next to the Opryland Hotel, Opry Mills shopping centre and the Grand Olde Opry itself. After unpacking we decided to explore the vicinity especially the shopping mall. It contains many of the stores you would expect and some with a particular Nashville twist like the boots……
……and the hats.
For our evening meal we tried a Bob Evans restaurant next to the hotel. Here we had some proper home made country food, Sylvia with meatloaf and me a turkey dinner.
Tomorrow we explore Nashville.