Lil' Exercise And A Lil' History

A few days ago, we grabbed all the pups and headed for a historic walk. "The Battle of Guilford Courthouse" is now a historic site. Smack dab in the city limits is what is now being turned into a revolutionary war memorial for all those in the southern regions that fought in the war. It even includes the burial sites of two of the three North Carolina representatives that signed the Declaration of Independence. Along with the burial sites of many others. Full of walking trails, historic markers and statues, it's a walk through history.

"On March 15, 1781. the largest, most hotly-contested battle of the Revolutionary War's Southern Campaign was fought at the small North Carolina back county hamlet of Guilford Courthouse.

Major General Nathanael Greene, defending the ground at Guilford Courthouse with an army of almost 4,500 American militia and Continentals, was tactically defeated by a smaller British army of about 1,900 veteran regulars and German allies commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis. After 2 1/2 hours of intense and often brutal fighting, Cornwallis forced his opponent to withdraw from the field. Greene's retreat preserved the strength of his army, but Cornwallis's frail victory was won at the cost of over 25% of his army.

Guilford Courthouse proved to be the high water mark of British military operations in the Revolutionary War. Weakened in his campaign against Greene, Cornwallis abandoned the Carolinas hoping for success in Virginia. At Yorktown, seven months after his victory at Guilford Courthouse, Lord Cornwallis would surrender to the combined American and French forces under General George Washington." -Excerpt from their website

It was pretty neat...and the dogs of course loved the walk.

(Mom and I and the dogs next to one of the bigger statues.)

(Toby)

(Beepa and the dogs)

...Playing Tourist cont'd

One other place we went to was the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum. Not that I condone smoking, but my gosh, the things that tobacco has done for this state, let alone the Durham area is astounding. I will admit I wasn't too excited about going to a tobacco museum, but we were floored when we heard all that went into growing tobacco, and all that is has done for the area in the past...without it they wouldn't have Duke University, Duke Energy (the local electric company), the Durham Bulls baseball team, or even baseball cards! Anyways, here was some of the stuff we saw...

Um, yah, this was a replica of the Liberty Bell, made entirely of tobacco leaves!

This would be one of the buildings they originally would of dried the leaves in.

And this is what it would of looked like inside.

This building they would "beat" the dried leaves, as demonstrated by our guide....

And we saw the original house the Duke's lived in, very simple, very small inside...and very warm, I am sooo grateful for my central air :-) It was fun learning a bit of history.