MoTW---10 Items Or Less
10:30 am: So we're off to find Devil's Den. The woman at the visitor's
bureau had told my woman it was up the road and that we couldn't miss it
so it would be easy.
Luckily this was the same road where the Boyd's Bear place was located
so no worries about getting lost or anything. Everything was good.
Then we saw a monument of a soldier. Interesting. Guess there was
fighting out this way. Then a couple more monuments by the side of the
road. Hmmmm.........
Then a farmhouse with some workers fixing the roof or something. And
then another monument, this one in a field on the left hand side.
I'm thinking and tell the woman that we should maybe check out these
monuments which she agrees to (since she really has no choice since I'm
driving and the navigator always gets to do what they want, which is why
I always drive) so this is what I do.
We drive down the road and pass more monuments and other roads going to
the right and left where there's more monuments.
She notices something up on a hill and we see lots of people up there
and decide to find a way up there. After taking a right instead of a
left and backtracking and taking the left, we found ourself at the top
of the hill where we parked.
We walked up to where there were more monuments and statues and then I
figured out what a fucking moron I was (and still am, I'm sure).
Here was the battlefield. He was where the main fighting took place. Not
in that small piece of land I had seen the night before, but here.
We were at a place called Little Round Top which looked down into a
giant stretch of land where the Union and the Confederacy battled. As I
walked around reading the plaques, she went off to "join" a tour group
where she got a history lesson (for free!).
Seriously though, just looking around our vantage point and reading
about what took place and the thousands of soldiers involved was just an
incredible experience. And in the grand scheme of things, it didn't take
place that long ago.
I located Devil's Den and after walking around a bit we headed back to
the car.
For the next hour or so we drove around, stopping to take pictures of
statues, monuments and memorials. This place was so big that one day
definitely wasn't enough time to visit everything.
We went back to the main road that had only hinted at our 'discovery",
went past the same farmhouse and took the same left turn and headed
back, this time taking the right hand turn which led us to Devil's Den.
More pictures, no rocks were picked up because that is EVIL.
More driving and stopping the check things out. The woman than said she
needed to find the Celtic Cross because she definitely needed a picture
of that so we drove around some more and eventually found it. And more
pictures were taken.
It suddenly dawned on me that we were stopping at all these monuments,
etc., but they were almost all in honor of Union soldiers. Where was the
Confederacy honored?
So I thought about this for a moment and figured that if they were
heading towards Little Round Top, the must have been coming from the
right side of that main road.
We headed back that way and spotted what looked like a lookout tower
that we looked at, but from a distance and I said, "Look, there's a
lookout tower there. No, look! There! See the lookout tower? I want to
look at it," or something along those lines.
Anyways, we found a righthand turn on the main road and headed down
until we came to a stop sign and.......no right turn. We could only turn
left but tower was on the right so what to do?
Easy. I took the left and found another left and headed back to the main
road where I took another left and then passed the left I had originally
taken and took the next left which brought us to another crossroads
where no right turn was allowed, but a left was which is what I did. And
there was the tower.
Oh, and the name of the road we were on was Confederate Way. Guess what
I had found?
Stopped at the tower and decided we would climb it. Even with my
paralyzing fear of heights, I went ahead and climbed this behemoth. I
clutched the railing and climbed up without looking down and then some
asshole kids decided it would be fun to run down and there really wasn't
a hell of a lot of room that allowed to people side by side on the
stairs so I stood on a landing with hands tightly grasping the railing
as these fuckheads ran past and I just knew one of them would bump me
and I would go sailing over the railing.
Of course that didn't happen cause I'm here typing this.
Made it to the top and I DID NOT walk to edge and look down or around.
Nope, I sat on the bench in the middle of that tower as the woman walked
around, looking over the edge, climbing up on the railing and dancing an
Irish jig on one leg, all while I sat there trying to hold in my
whimpers of fear.
After about 10 minutes I decided that was enough and we headed down. I
DID NOT let go of that railing until I was on good old solid ground. Oh,
and from what I could see from the top, the view was awesome.
I had a cigarette which calmed me down but good and then we headed back
to the car.
Past more monuments, statues, etc., but no pictures were taken because
she had used up all the film. Plus, we would have had to do some serious
backtracking to start Confederate Way at it's beginning. After debating
on what to do we decided to head back to the main road and head towards
the Boyd's Bear place (again, for her, not me).
And as I headed back to that main road I kept reminding myself how truly
stupid I am.
COMING NEXT: Part 6 obviously
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