Two Weeks

As of last night I have two weeks left at Petersburg. I'm also going to be a little more lonely for that time. M., who has spent the last two weeks here, headed back home to Pittsburgh yesterday evening. This makes me even more ready to head home when my time here is over. In addition Madeline, my housemate left yesterday since her volunteer internship was over. All of Quarters #34 is now empty except for me. I expect I might start visiting Merlin more often just for some company.

While M was here we did take a trip to City Point so I could work on a geocaching project I'm developing for the park. While regular geocaches are not allowed on park ground EarthCaches are. EarthCaches note places of geological interest and ask visitors to follow their GPS to a location and answer questions about it. Look here for more info on Geocaching and here for EarthCaches. One of the locations I'm working on has invasive rocks from Europe on the shore of the James river at City Point.

Flint Nodules

 The picture above shows flint nodules. They were brought over from Europe on ships bound for the British settlements along the James River. They were used as ballast in those ships to keep them upright and stable during the Atlantic crossing. When the ships arrived in Virginia they loaded up with goods like lumber and tobacco and had no room or need for the ballast, which they dropped into the river. Flint like this is rare in the eastern United States, but the shoreline along the City Point portion of Petersburg Battlefield is littered with such stones.

Hotter than car full of Chili Cook-off Judges

The heat is back. Oddly enough I think I'm beginning to get used to it. heat index readings up near 110 degrees are becoming somewhat commonplace. Yes, it is hot,but as long as I don't do anything too foolhardy I survive just fine. Drinking a lot of water is key. Already today I've had about five pints of water and will probably drink another four this afternoon.

The heat does seem to cut down on unnecessary movement. Even the wildlife at the park are silent and motionless starting around midday until close to 4:30pm.

Ticks

I have learned way too much about ticks this summer. I already knew about dog ticks and deer ticks but evidently there are more varieties down here in Virginia and all of them want nothing more than to latch on to me and perhaps give me lime disease. Among the many type of tick to be found here in Virginia are the very small and sneaky seed ticks and sand ticks. These are almost impossible to detect except by a severe itching where ever they have happened to get hold of a person. Evidently this is a bad year for ticks and they are everywhere. We spray the campers down with bug spray every day before leaving the building. Still some of them come back with clinging pests. I've picked, brushed, and scraped about six or seven ticks off myself since the summer started and I'm usually very careful about where I go and how often I use bug repellent (lemongrass - environmentally safe). I know three people on staff here who have had lime disease recently and one more who has it now. I mention all this now because the kids today went on a scavenger hunt and went into the forest. As always a few of them came back with ticks.

Tombstone House

Yesterday afternoon, after all our preparations for camp were made, M and I went hiking at Five Forks. I was looking for large granite boulders, which I'd been told sat along side the trails. I want to note the location of the boulders for a project I'm working on.We hiked for about two hours and found one illegal geocache, which I had to report to the park law enforcement officers. Its illegal to place geocaches on national park land. I'm all in favor of the geocaching game when people play by the rules, but putting them on park land is clearly not allowed. I did not find my large boulders. We did run across a fairly hidden stretch of wetland with a wildlife viewing station and a log book placed there by a boy scout troop.

Afterward we drove to Poplar Grove National Cemetery. Poplar Grove was the burial place for thousands of Union soldiers. The grounds seem small, but the graves are usually close together and very numerous. It is somewhat striking that all the stones are flat and often concealed by the very short grass. This gives the cemetery the appearance on first glance of a large open lawn punctuated by very large trees. The brick wall at the edges of the graveyard seem like they could easily be seen around the perimeter of the a country estate or city park.

Most of the identities of the soldiers at Poplar Grove are unknown and
so the graves are numbered on small square chunks of granite.

Stone styles differ depending on the year they were last replaced.

There is, of course, a reason that all the stones in Poplar Grove are flat. In the 1930's when all the battlefield parks passed from the Dept of Defense to the Dept of the Interior the first National Park Service superintendent at Petersburg though the cemetery would be much easier to maintain if all the stones were flat on the ground. He was wrong for lots of reasons, but like a good government employee, he didn't let that stop him from trying. The stones were uprooted and the lower (underground) portions of each tombstone was cut off. The cut chunks of stone were actually sold to a man named Oswald Young, who used the blank chunks of marble to build a house not far away. That's right. A house made out of 2,200 marble tombstones , which previously marked the resting places of Union soldiers.

The house looks quite odd. There is something strange about it. It gave me the impression of looking at a very large mausoleum. The place is still privately owned and recently was sold. I wish I knew how much it went for.