Weekly Hike: General Bragg Trail

The boys and I are studying American History this year and we have been learning a lot about the Civil War over the last couple of weeks. Since I try to pick different locations each week for our hikes, I thought a hike at The Chickamauga Battlefied would be a good fit.

I picked the General Bragg Trail as our focus point (there are more than 50 miles of trails at this location!). We did not follow the exact route, but we did cover the entirety of the five mile hike.

 

 

 

This was not the most scenic hike we have done, and it was quite muddy even though there hadn't been recent rain, but I felt like it provided us a tiny idea of what it might have felt like to march or trudge through these woods at the time of the Civil War.

 

The kids always surprise me and are generally good sports when the hikes are long, even the littler ones.

 

There are so many monuments throughout this battlefield with markers telling of battles fought and who fought them. 34,000 casualties happened in these fields and woods – a sobering thought to be sure.

 

One of the boys found a jaw bone of what we think was a deer, complete with teeth. Another boy pulled out one of his loose teeth while we walked! You never know what will happen on the trail with kids.

 

 

 

Yesterday was surprisingly warm out, and as we hiked Jack begged me to let him take off his shirt. I agreed and within 15 minutes there was a slew of little boys running around shirtless. One of the little girls wanted to know why the boys were naked – hah!

 

I always enjoy our walks, and feel very privileged that others are choosing to join us each week.

 

 

At the beginning of the hike I went into the Visitor Center and grabbed Jr. Ranger books and badges for my boys. We have been collecting these for the last two years. The material was really beneficial to go over today as it is cold and rainy out.

Here are our badges and books for the Jr. Ranger program. I would highly recommend grabbing them if you visit this National Battlefield. Something I learned is that this was the first park in the country with this designation.

 

This was the 14th hike (14/52) for the year and we covered 5 miles bringing total miles for this year to 42.5.