Summer Trip

I'm half way through the summer MNHS trip to the south. We landed in Washington DC, drove through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Baltimore, North Carolina, South Carolina, and now we're in Georgia.

It's been a loooong trip. Especially since I'm such a homebody.

Here's just a list of some of the places we've been --

Manasses and Bull Run battlefield in Virginia, Harper's Ferry in West Virginia, Antietam in Maryland, Gettysburg in Pennsylvania (an 8 hour tour led by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, and pre-eminent Civil War scholar, James McPherson), Colonial Williasmburg, Jamestown, and Berkeley Plantation in Virginia.

Then on the way to Charlestown, South Carolina, disaster struck. A hose broke lose and drained all the transmission fluid from the engine. This left us stranded along side the road in 110 degree heat - thankfully the bus still could run and keep the air conditioning running. We spent the better part of two hours waiting for the replacement bus.

When it finally arrived, we didn't think things could get worse. How wrong we were. For the replacement bus was about as bad as bad gets. It was smaller, with limited airconditioning, and the toilet had not been changed in what seemed (and smelled) like weeks.

One of our scholars got on board and promptly turned around when the smell hit him square in the face and marched off the bus.

When I asked him what was wrong, he simply stated, "the air conditioning is broken and the shitters full!"

Spoken like a true Minnesotan.

But we all hopped on and drove the rest of the way through Virginia and all of North Carolina before winding up in Charleston at close to three am.

Our hotel in Charleston made up for the horrific bus (which was finally sent back to the junk yard and a better replacement was found).

Dr. Clifford Kuehn joined us to help guide us through the rest of the trip. The next day we headed out to Fort Sumter. Then we toured the plantation called Drayton Hall. This was the hottest it has been on the trip. The heat index said it felt like 111 outside. We all literally had sweat pouring out of us, but our elderly tour guide didn't even break a sweat! Never am I going to complain about subzero temps again!

The next morning we left right away for Savannah, Georgia. Then we road four hours to Plains, GA and toured the boyhood home of Jimmy Carter (our plan to sit in on one of his Sunday School lessons fell through).

Today we toured Andersonville, the site of one of the most horrific prisoner of war camps from the Civil War. In fact, Andersonville houses a museum dedicated to all American POW's. After a bus tour of the grounds, we entered the museum for one of the most moving documentaries on POWs that I've seen.

We listened as POWs testified either through journal (for the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, of course) or through interviews (this included WWI and II vets as well as POWs from Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf) to the horrific conditions they were subjected to. But each also focused on how brotherhood and sisterhood, faith, and hope to see their families again, allowed them to survive countless days of horror.

I wiped the tears from my eyes on several occasions and I was not alone.

I couldn't help but think as I listened to these testimonies that anyone who condones torture of our current POWs to gain information is simply insane. And if they call themselves Christians, they are hypocrites.

All you had to do was listen to the vets on the tape (including Jon McCain) who testified to being tortured and giving false information.

It was the most moving moment of this trip.

After a great buffet lunch we visited FDR's "Little White House" in Warm Springs.


Then we spent a few more hours on the bus heading to Georgia. Our hotel here makes the incredible Omni Park Hotel in Boston from three years ago seem like a Best Western. Our room not only has two separate bedrooms, Jeff's has its own bathroom, but it also has a full kitchen, washer and dryer, extra bathroom, and living room. This hotel room is nicer than any apartment I've ever stayed in.

Tomorrow brings a tour of several places in Atlanta.

Though this has been the trip of a lifetime, I'm missing my family something awful. I am blessed with a great wife and family. Not being with them is hard. But we are on the home stretch of our tour and by the end of the week I'll be back home!