Sharp's Travels

This morning we were ready to head up to the hall here in the park for a free pancake breakfast at 7:30 am. All we had to bring were our dishes and silverware. We also brought along our peanut butter to put on those pancakes along with the syrup. There were quite a number of couples there already enjoying their breakfast.

We were back at the 5th wheel by 8:15 and did our ½ hr walk around the park.

Our plan for the day was to head for Andersonville to check out the Andersonville National Prisoner of War museum, the Andersonville National Cemetery and the prison site. It was about 32 miles from our campground.

By 10:30 we were on our way. We passed a number peanut and cotton fields. It was neat to check out the countryside around here.

We arrived at the Museum about 11:30 just in time for the first of their 2 movies on life inside this civil war prison. It even gave outtakes from diaries of the inmates. They were both very informative and made you feel you were right there in the prison. We stepped out the rear door of the lobby and saw the Prisoner of War Commemorative Courtyard. A small stream flow through the granite courtyard and encircles three walls of sculpted brick—men, women, and barbed wire molded from the clay. A bronze statue of a prisoner of war hunches over the water, water dripping from his outstretched hands into the stream below. It was a beautiful tribute to the people that served our country.

We headed into the museum that is laid out to shows all the miseries our prisoners have gone through in all the wars we have been involved in, along with the worries and hardships their families went through not knowing whether their loved ones were dead or alive. We heard about the 45,000 Union prisoners that were held at the prison and the terrible conditions they lived in. We toured the prison grounds by using a CD auto tour. It explained everything on the prison site and the cemetery. Out of the 45,000 prisoners, 13,000 died. They were buried side by side, shoulder to shoulder in shallow graves. There was one prisoner that was in charge all the death records. Out of the 13,000 there are only 450 graves that are marked “unknown”. Each prisoner was given a number and as they were buried all that marked their grave was a stick with their number on it. Today, because of the death records that were kept in the prison each site is marked with a headstone with their number, name and state they were from.

The prison grounds and the cemetery also contain monuments from each state that had prisoners that were kept at Andersonville Prison.

We enjoyed checking out and learning about some of our Civil War history.

We headed back to Montezuma to Yoder’s Restaurant for supper. Everything was cafeteria style and was very good, even the pie!

We were home by 6:30 and watched some of our taped shows before turning in.

I have uploaded some pictures of the Andersonville Prison.