CAVALRY!

After leaving the Devonian Fossil Gorge north of Coralville, we had a choice - go back the way we came to I-80, or see if we could make our way East on the county roads to Highway 1 going from Iowa City to Mt. Vernon. We rode east. Little did we know that Jeb Stuart's free-ranging Virginia cavalry was in the neighborhood.



The rebs inquired whether we had news from Richmond. Truthfully, we told them we hadn't heard a thing since President Davis's train headed out to Danville. We didn't tell them that the place was crawling with Yanks...



...including this Wisconsin trooper who posed with Bobby.

We had stumbled onto the Johnson County farm these Civil War reenactors use to train their horses for the re-enactment season ahead. It turns out there are re-enactment events in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin every year. I had assumed that was more of a Southern thing. It's a lively and weirdly attractive subculture, but one that requires far more time and energy than I can imagine devoting to it. If you haven't read "Confederates in the Attic," you should - among other things, it opens a window into the re-enactor world.

Here in Iowa, Yanks and Johnnies seem to get along just fine. I think...