The highlight of yesterday's trip from Clarksville Tennessee to Jonesboro Arkansas was a stop at Fort Donelson just to the west of Dover on the Cumberland River where one of the decisive battles of the Civil War was waged. Indeed the union forces under General Ulesses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote were able to take Fort Donelsen on February 16, 1862. Up until that point the war had been going badly for the Union with losses at Manassas and Wilson's Creek in the summer of 1881. By defeating John B. Floyd and Brig, Gen. Gideon J. Pillow (who both slipped away to Nashville when they realized that the battle would be lost) and Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner (who had been a friend and former West Point classmate of Grant before the war), who actually surrendered, the union had broken the defences of the confederate forces and would subsequently be able to push south until the union became one again.
As a national battlefield, the grounds are well maintained and the signage makes it relatively easy to appreciate where the conderate and union forces were deployed and how the battle ensued. From the emplacement pictured here the conderate forces fired on the US ironclads but were unable to defend the fort.
The previous two pictures show the numbers of Union and Coderate forces engaged in the battle at Fort Donelson. The Union victory came at quite a cost. Years later Buckner would visit Grant who was on his deathbed and the two friends and then enemies would shake hands. Buckner would be one of the pallbearers at Grant's funeral.
From Fort Donelson I rode under a hot sun to Jonesboro Arkansas. This involved a ferry ride accross the Mississippi from Hickman KY to Dorena MO. I was alone on the ferry and while it was fairly windy the 15 minute crossing was uneventful.
When I left the hotel this morning the sky was overcast and the temperature was 29 degrees. There were reports that isolated thunderstorms were possible later in the day but nothing to worry about; right! as the sky got darker and darker and the first drops of rain began to fall I pulled off the road to put on my rain gear. As I was doing so a car pulled over and a man, with a young woman in the passenger seat called me over. "I saw you earlier and just thought I'd stop to tell you that the radio says there are high winds, hail, rain, lightning and thunder coming this way..just letting you know." I thanked him for the information and asked how far the next town was? "Oh, about 20, no 19 milles or so." And he drove off. I followed and arrived in Mountain House just as the temperature dropped to 19 and theavy rain, and I mean heavy, started to come down. Everything, except the hail, came as promised. I managed to find a safe harbour in the parking lot of a Arby's and spent the next hour and a half watching the storm supercell go by and having lunch. At one point I think I saw Miss Gulch fly by on her bicycle, but I'm not sure. Oh, and the man and the girl in the car, they both turned up in the restaurant after having spent the worst part of the storm in the nearby Walmart. Just a granfather taking his teenaged grandaughter shopping and for a lunch treat.
The rest of the trip through the Ozarks was easy; the sun came out, the temperature rose to 29, I removed the raingear, and the pavement was soon as dry as if there had been no rain at all.
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