Fun day in Vicksburg

I had originally planned to just go to Vicksburg National Military park, but wound up hitting two neat bonus stops too. 

This is the third trip to Vicksburg, and each time I manage to see a bit more of the park-  spent about 2 hours or so today.  Got the 4 stamps that had been upgraded to newer versions here today also. 

At the main Visitor's Center, I  watched the movie again, and found two new pins, and a hiking medallion as well.  I also got a set of trading cards, after having to answer a bunch of questions to "earn" them. 

Then, I went of to the USS Cairo museum to get the two new stamps there.  Once again, got confused about how to get there, since the park is a myriad of one way streets, but finally found it. 

If one wanted to, you could spend the better part of a day just gazing at all the monuments that are located here, each state has a major monument for their participants, and then there are any number of unit and personal ones as well. Must be several hundred, if not near 500. 

So I am now complete for all the stamps from this unit, and up to date. 


Then, I was given a guide to downtown Jackson, and fortuitously, I found two other neat locations to go to:

The first was the old Railroad Depot Museum,

They did a couple of million dollar renovation here and it opened in 2011, I believe.  There are two floors of exhibits, mainly railroad stuff, and a fabulous collection of over 200 boats, since this is on the banks of the Mississippi. 

They had a wonderful full diorama of the siege of Vicksburg..

They had multiple displays of over 200 boats 

Three different train layouts. 

Right down the street was something called the Lower Mississippi River Museum, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers.  Big money spent here for rah-rah. 

 Attached to the museum was a retired working boat on the River, the MV USS Mississippi, of course.  Interesting to tour it, it carried passengers for tours, and I guess freight too. 

One of the two big engines that drove this big beast-  there were signs indicating that the boat was known throughout its service as "Old Shaky" due to excessive vibration-  they finally resolved it to "acceptable levels" after 3 years.  The boat was very nicely appointed, for the travelers as well as the crew, which seemed to be several, many officers and crew. 

Tomorrow, think I will do some local sites around town, a sports museum, the state capitol, and a school or two.