I climbed Kennesaw Mountain yesterday

UPDATE: OK, I went downstairs and added the pix. /UPDATE

Man, I need to exercise more.  The mountain is the site of a battle in the War Between the States, where Gen. Johnston's boys gave a whupping to Billy Sherman's Federals.  Not that it really helped them in the long run.

The hike (up Pidgeon Hill) is quite steep, and you go past the old trenches looking down from the crest of the hill.  No wonder the Boys in Blue got their tails handed to them, trying to charge up that slope against dug in defenders.  The whole attack was stupid.

Copyright Borepatch.  Click to enbiggen

These are the trenches dug by the Confederate Missouri regiment, which extend diagonally up to the right of the photo, as it parallels the crest of the hill.  These positions were attacked by the Union Missouri regiment is a very real example of fratricidal war.  The Missouri defenders gave a proper thrashing to their fellow statesmen, who had to charge up something like this:

Copyright Borepatch.  CLick to embiggen

That's looking down what's approximately a 45° slope over broken ground.  Like I said, the attack was stupid.  It's said that Sherman was angry at his Army for something or other, and intentionally sent them against these positions.  I don't know if this is true or not, but he was one cold hearted SOB and so this is plausible.

Now the alarums of those days are long past, and all you have is a quiet memorial trail, if you think on the dead of that battle.  Theirs is a quiet and beautiful memorial.

While I was hiking along the trail, I passed a your teenage couple - typical All American youth - playing chess.  It was an interesting riff on the expected Young Love theme, although that seemed to be there - I could hear her giggles as he moved his piece on the board.  The whole thing was quite unexpected, and made me smile.

Pictures later - the camera is downstairs, and I had quite enough climbing yesterday, thank you very much. [UPDATE: fixed now]