a little more history

Monday was pretty cool with the temperatures only rising into the lower 50's so we decided to park the bikes for today.

We hung around the campground for a while just relaxing and enjoying a slower start to the day. Our campground is part of McFarland Park ran by the city of Florence. They offer full hook up sites (no cable or Wifi) for a very reasonable price and if you are 62 or over you get an even better deal.

Reservations are accepted but they charge an additional $3.00 charge as a "reservation" fee plus you cannot reserve a certain site but it will guarantee a site available when you arrive.

The campground has a mix of angled back in sites and pull thru sites. A little heads up though, the back in sites are longer and the pull thrus are situated in the center aisle between the back in rows and look difficult to get into with a larger rig.

The park sits right on the Tennessee River. There is an access road you have to cross to get to the river but there is hardly any traffic here at all. They have a nice shower house, laundry centrally located in the camping loop. All said this is one of the better parks we have stayed at and the price makes it an even better deal!

We decided to head over to Shiloh National Military Park about 50 miles northwest in Tennessee. Rudee and I had been here before but had not been able to spend a lot of time exploring. We started at the visitors center watching a film explaining the battle. I will have to say it was one of the poorest documentaries I have seen. The film had to be at least 20-30 years old and was pretty cheesy.

We did purchase the auto CD driving tour since we were impressed with the one we did in Vicksburg. The park gives you a map with the tour stops marked but after you purchase the CD they give you another sheet of paper to follow because they have re-done the map and didn't change the CD so the tour stop numbers, roads and route do not correlate to each other. Needless to say we were disappointed with having to pay $14 for a tour CD and got lost several times trying to follow the poor directions given. We expected better.

One highlight to our visit was seeing this sight.

This is a male Bald Eagle and he is closely guarding the nest where his mate was sitting on an egg due to hatch any day. The park service has a TV monitor set up in the visitor center with a camera on the nest watching the excitement unfold. Look close and you can see the female looking over the edge of the nest.

We stopped for supper on the way back to the campground since it was getting late. Tuesday is supposed to be the start of warmer and sunnier weather. I'll keep you posted.