Richmond, VA

The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA will be moving its artifacts into a new museum (combining with another group). The White House of the Confederacy, as seen below, and ten steps away from the museum will remain open. After visiting, we understood the need to relocate. You can see Virginia's Commonwealth University surrounding the location. Since the university has expanded it's medical center, dwarfing the museum and historical house, visitors to the site have dropped more than 50%.

For history lovers, it was a great place to visit. Displays were organized by time, but also included a lot of personal information, including excerpts from diaries and letters.

Another museum that medical history lovers would enjoy is on Broad Street, shown below. We visited there on our last day. While cold and windy, there wasn't snow flurries that morning, and the sun was shining. 2/3 of the way up the elevator/stair lift, it started smoking and then quit. Bobby was stuck, unable to get out (you now, the safety mechanisms that keep wheelchairs from rolling that also trap you in when the things malfunction) and the VERY kind and professional park rangers called the fire department to get him out, while also bringing him their personal blankets and offering their own jackets to keep him warm. The firemen were nice, considerate, helpful, and they got him out of the lift, as well as down the ten cement steps, after carrying his heavy chair down the steps. They more than earned their pay that day.  As I've told him more than once in the last 15 years of marriage: Life with you is never dull.

While waiting for the firemen, I did quickly walk around the display room, saw the bone shattered by a bullet and how it was amputated (and the soldier from NC died while in the Union hospital), and spent even more time in the gift shop, quickly checked out my "girly" Civil War book that Bobby would have never ever picked out, then joined the excitement on the porch as they removed him from the lift.

I have to say, US Park Rangers and Richmond's firefighters, specifically Truck 1 Engine 1 Team, are the best in the world. I so wanted to pull out camera and start snapping pictures, but the rangers were already embarrassed and horrified by the incident, and I now most public officials aren't overly thrilled about photos of them in action, so I didn't even ask. They were hauling very precious cargo, after all, and I wanted their focus to stay on him. But I would recommend both of these museums to history aficionados (along with the Tredegar Museum, which will also be the new location of the joint museum).