Jessie loves history, and battlefields are special places to visit. Today we drove part of the tour road at the Vicksburg National Military Park.

During the Civil War the North won a key victory here at Vicksburg, gaining control of the Mississippi River.

A couple days ago we visited the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. I cannot comprehend the hell of battle, but I can better wrap my head around what happened 50 years ago than I can the Civil War 150 years ago. How did the generals coordinate with each other without radios and encrypted data links? Those were tough times.

The military park was pretty, filled with more than a thousand monuments. I wish there was more information explaining what happened and the tactics used. Maybe we would have got that in the visitors center, but we skipped that. We arrived at 3:45pm and the park closed at 5:00 so we went straight to the road tour, a 16 mile self-guided tour you drive in your car. We didn't get to see all of it, though, since the park closed.

For me not as satisfying the New Orleans' WWII museum, but this was still interesting.

At one stop along the tour I watched a wasp removing dirt from his hole in the ground. A second wasp landed next to the adjacent hole and left by the door a slightly smaller dead green bug. The green-bug-murdering wasp chased away the first wasp when they were both outside at the same time, and then after he had prepared his den the second wasp pulled his prey down below the surface. I could hear him talking down there too, it is surprising clear on the video. What's he saying?

Later, the dogs got interested in something too.