Chickamauga And Chattanooga National Military Park — Attraction in Fort Oglethorpe

When I lived in Atlanta, a friend of mine who grew up in this area used to bring me up here to ride our bikes around the park. I always was amazed by the beauty of the park and just the number of monuments to the soldiers that fought here. So now I am many years removed from living in Atlanta, and I brought my family here recently, it was a great experience.

They have a self-guided tour where you go to 8 stops and dial up a phone number, enter the stop and you get information on the battle. It really helps to go from stop #1 to stop #8 in order to make sense of how the battle evolved.

We were very lucky in that the weather was dry and there was a nice breeze. It can get really, really hot during the summer, so go early in the day.

The visitor's center is a must see. They have rifles upon rifles upon rifles including the famous Spencer Rifles used by the Wilder Brigade during one of the most intense moments of the battle. If I am not mistaken, they have the actual rifle used by John T. Wilder. The Wilder Brigade Monument is a mandatory stop as well.

It does not hurt to read "This Terrible Sound" by Peter Cozzens either prior to or subsequent to visiting this park. A long book, but a great read about this battle.

In all my years of coming here, I have never seen huge crowds, it's always very peaceful yet you get such a sense of how enormous and violent...

There are places in this world where God has transformed me, and the human spirit was terrible. Atrocities have happened now it’s a beautiful place where there is still some magic that somehow unites people if you want to find something really good you should go there if you want to see, what I’m talking about you should take a walk or a run early morning maybe you and I love you and your thoughts I promise you it’s going to be a different person. After this, I grew up on the edge of this battlefield, only two blocks away, and I spent my entire childhood inside it. I know there are strange things between heaven and earth, and we all know you can find some of them here, but all the terrible things that happened there. Somehow, now it’s a place where you can feel you can’t ship to everyone and nature, and it’s one of few places I know it doesn’t cost you hardly anything; the gas it takes to get there may be a few bucks to go into a museum, she could spend a day and have a great time something I’ll remember the rest your life I don’t know anywhere you can get that for this price do yourself a favor...

The Visitors Center is very open with lots of information displayed. There's some artifacts, but not as many as I thought there would be. The Ranger was awesome and great to chat with!

The cool thing is the auto tour. There's signs directing you where to turn and qr codes that have audio explaining each stop. While a lot of the monuments are right along the road, several are tucked back in the woods. The trails I explored were easy to navigate and well marked, unlike Fort Pulaski last month. I want to come back later and do some proper hiking, but today's exploring was still great. The roads I drove were mostly one way, low speed, well paved ones with several pull off spots, making it really easy to see everything without being a traffic hazard.

They had red and blue signs, blue describing what happened on that spot for the north, red for the south.

It was so peaceful and quiet, I had to remind myself that there had been a literal war fought on the very ground I was walking on.

It's definitely a site I want to come spend more...