Ranger Reunion

Today Ranger Sharon and I had a reunion with Ranger Stacy (whom you may remember from last year)! She now works at Gulf Islands National Seashore down off the coast of Gulfport, Mississippi, but she came up to Natchez to finish moving all of her stuff down there. Her job specifically is to take people on tours of Fort Massachusetts out on Ship Island in the Gulf of Mexico. It sounds like a really cool place, but I just hope for her sake that no more bad hurricanes come up that way. Katrina did a number on the park there. In fact, their park headquarters is still in a temporary trailer, and there are 17,000 residents in the area still in FEMA trailers. If another hurricane does come along Katrina's route this summer, I don't think that the coast could handle it. Angie and I are thinking to take a road trip down to Gulf Islands later this summer, which would be super fun. Stacy brought Sharon and me pizza for lunch--yum!

It was a pretty slow day at Melrose today, but that was a good thing because Sharon and I were the only rangers there. Everybody else was up in Vicksburg with the little kiddies learning about the Civil War. Vicksburg is a fascinating place--I'm kind of captivated by the whole story of the place. The Confederate forces put up one heck of a fight against the Union troops--thus the two-month siege. In learning about this Union general named John McClernand, I have come to kind of question the military ethics of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. McClernand was supposed to lead the attack on Vicksburg, but Grant told him to go recruit soldiers in Illinois, and then Grant went ahead and attacked the city while McClernand was away. Grant and Sherman's tactics in taking the city were pretty crazy--they did some kind of weird stuff that got a lot of soldiers killed. But, that's easy for me to say in hindsight--they were probably just doing what they thought was best.

It is really hot here today, and has been for the last few days. Everything is starting to melt. Unfortunately that cool May weather we had a few weeks ago was short-lived. Welcome to summer in Mississippi!