Normally I have several of my hiking friends on these tours at Perryville, which helps keep the numbers decent. For the spring walking tour, although it was expanded by both time on the field and amount of miles to be walked, there was only one of the hiking group who was able to make it, and to be honest, because of the lack of hikers I thought we would see a low turnout of participants. Thank goodness I was wrong. We had about forty folks show up, thirty-five for the morning tour, and about five replacements for the afternoon tour, keeping both tours at about thirty-five walkers. This made the spring walking tour one of the most successful yet in terms of participants.
The weather was quite grand, going from overcast skies in the early morning to sun by the time the morning tour set off, and the sun stayed with us all day! Having such great weather seemed to keep the group invigorated, even when dealing with a few ticks and some higher than normal grass (the park is suffering from having only one working mower, and miles of trails to be cut). And we had some enjoyable banter post event at the new Bluegrass Pizza location, and even more banter at Beer Engine later that night! (V-The Market was undergoing some sort of remodel so we moved the post event location)
The park was kind enough to provide us some 10% discount coupons to be used in the museum, and I do believe several folks took advantage of a restocked book selection (probably the best I have seen in the last few years at Perryville). Thank you, Joni House, for being so generous! I hope the museum saw some increased sales!
I cannot thank both the participants who come out year after year, ask great questions and provide some great insight along the way, and I also really cannot thank Chuck Lott enough for his support, his knowledge, and his willingness to support the Perryville "mission". I plan on having a talk with Chuck about the direction we go in the future. We both liked the expanded tour, having a break for lunch, and covering more ground, but we also find that there are so many details it may call for even more specialization, or perhaps two tours each year, each one focusing on specific parts of the battle. Stay tuned for details!
More tour pictures can be found on the Facebook page HERE.
