After visiting Shenandoah National Park, we drove 120 miles to the south and camped close to the Blue Ridge Parkway near Lynchburg, Virginia, Monday through Wednesday.
We drove to the Civil War historical site where General Lee surrendered the confederate army to General Grant. It took place in a small town on a stagecoach road, and the county seat, so it was called Appomattox Court House. (We learned that all county seats back then had an additional two words to describe the town – Court House – and before, we thought it referred to an actual court house.)
The surrender took place in a private home in this town (seen above). The National Park movie ‘With Malice Toward None’ was brilliant and beautiful. We were moved by how both Grant and Lee embraced Lincoln’s request that the Confederate soldiers should be immediately freed after turning in their weapons ‘with malice toward none’. It took six hours for Lee’s 22,000 nearby troops to line up, one division at a time, and relinquish their rifles to the Union Army.
The next day we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a while, and visited the Peaks of Otter. The breathtaking green canopy of trees and vistas of peaks, gaps, and hollers along the parkway will remain in our memory for a long time.
In the afternoon, we visited the National D-Day Memorial in the town of Bedford, Virginia. This small town lost more boys on D-Day, per capita, than any other city in the United States (21 of the 30 ‘Bedford Boys’ died during D-Day). The town had the idea for this memorial, and Congress approved their plan, without federal funds, to establish this beautiful memorial. The huge garden, to the right of this picture, is in the shape of the SHAEF (emblem for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expenditionary Forces — the Allied Forces ) and honors Eisenhower and his generals.
We visited Omaha Beach (the D-Day location) in France in 2010, and seeing this glorious tribute to the sacrifice made on D-Day was emotional for us. It is a moving memorial to see, especially after recently seeing the Flight 93 Memorial and the Civil War Antietam battlefield last week.
Thanks for all the great pictures and posts. Feels like we are with you!