American Civil War....Now With Lemonade!

Last Saturday we went down to Haymarket, VA to visit some friends from Charlottesville. We like to get together every couple weeks so we usually try to meet up somewhere in between and Haymarket fits the bill. It's a small town right off I-81. Just like the last time we went there, we had planned on doing some hiking in the national park. But as we were getting close to the exit ramp we noticed hundreds of cars parked in a field off to the left. Then smoke.....then horses....then boom! A cannon goes off! Nice!


Evidently, once a year Haymarket hosts a big Civil War Reenactment. I know that my friend is really interested in Civil War history and so we rush to our meeting place to let them know the exciting news. They didn't see all the activity off the interstate since they were coming from the southern side. We meet up, they agree to follow and we head into the park where we saw all the cannons and tents.

One downside. No pets. Our friends brought their dog so he would have to stay in the car. Unfortunately, the rifles and cannons were freaking him out as well so one of them decided to stay with the dog for a little bit while the rest of us went and checked out the scene.

We did see a few more shots get fired, but the battle was just ending and people were packing up for the day. Oh well, maybe next time. I did, however get to take a few pictures of some civil war era things. My favorite? The civil war era lemonade stand.




Since it ended as soon as we got there we did go hiking and of course it was great. There were actually people on the trail who were in the middle of a 100-mile race! They were about half way done when we saw them at about 4:00pm. That's incredible. Liz and I walked 39 miles over 2 days last year for the Avon Walk and I was looking like Frankenstein.

We found a nice spot to have lunch and then headed back to McDonalds to pick up our car. But before we decided to leave one another we grabbed some sundaes and fries and played a game of rummy. "H" won.