day 49

21 July 2008



The weather forcast said it was going to be 97 degrees today, with lots of sun. So we decided to go very early to try to beat the heat a bit (I think it was only supposed to get down to 75 or so for the low, so we figured it would heat up pretty quickly). We got up at 4 am and got on the trail as quickly as we could, which was around 5:30 (we had to drive about an hour to get from the hotel back to where we left off).

We picked up the pace a bit, but still didn't finish until about 1. We stopped at one of the Civil War battlefield sites, which was pretty amazing. There are still embankments all over from the trenches they dug. The battle was called the battle of Cold Harbor, I think. The Union troops charged the well entrenched Confederate troops, and 7000 Union troops were basically mowed down. Most of the killing took only 30 seconds. It's crazy to think about how many people died in that war.

We rode 84 miles, and ended a little past Glendale, which is a little way East of Richmond.