Saturday, April 25, 2015

Common Sense On The Display Of The Dixie Cross

Someone sent me a link to yet another misinformed rant from a pro-racist, anti-Confederate heritage reactionary:
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150414_Limit_public_use_of_Confederate_flag.html#qHmwC0eeeX0WbsIL.01

I decided that I would go ahead and write a response to the article, but found that after posting four equally misinformed responses from like-minded Tools that went along with the flawed and faulty premise of the article, the closed-minded coward apparently closed the comments section out of fear that he would be schooled by someone knowledgeable of the issue.

Well since it was his article, the author, one Mr. Paul F. Bradley, has every right to evoke censorship.

However, since this is my uncensored blog, I have every right to offer my personal response to the article, point by point.

Let's begin shall we?

Limit Public Use Of The Confederate Flag  (Snort)

As the country has commemorated the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag has been paraded at events across the country. (Actually there are many different Confederate battle flags -- though I presume Mr. Bradley refers to the Dixie Cross pattern itself rather than say the Missouri Battle Flag, or the Hardee Battle Flag -- oh and FYI that flag and others like it have been paraded at events across the country long before the sesquicentennial of the War Between The States.) In the commemorative context - at battle reenactments, museums, and cemeteries - it seemed appropriate. Beyond that, is there a more divisive and controversial symbol in America? (I can name several off the top of my head: The Obama symbol and other political symbols of candidates both Left and Right -- why campaigning politicians need their own symbols these days like sports logos is beyond me .)

I live in suburban America. (Really? So do I!) The neighborhoods and surrounding landscape are filled with picturesque woods, river vistas, and neatly trimmed houses with retail shopping at major road crossings. Old Glory (the real U.S flag) waves from nearly every other porch. (Old Glory flies from my porch too -- though it does have company. Also I don't dispute the fact that the US flag is Old Glory....but the terms US flag and American flag I don't really consider the same things.)

On a recent run, though, I stopped in my tracks. On one street I counted four Rebel battle flags (two bumper stickers, one hanging in the back window of a pickup truck, and one that snapped menacingly in the late winter winds). (Wow and he saw all of this at once? He must have eagle eyes this one.) This is just outside Philadelphia. (Go Eagles!)
 
Visually, the Rebel battle flag is captivating. (Captivating, yet menacing according to the schizophrenic mind of the writer.) With its red field, blue stripes, and white stars, it was a 19th-century marketing gem. Red symbolizes power and aggression and psychologically strikes fear, and no doubt that was the hope as this banner was carried into battle by Robert E. Lee's troops. (Not just General Lee's troops. By 1864 the Confederate Army of Tennessee had its own version of the Dixie Cross battle flag.)
 
To some, this flag is a symbol of Southern heritage. It represents the pride and courage of the Southern soldiers who challenged perceived federal tyranny during the War Between the States. (That and much more: a symbol of a living Southern cultural identity and pride, as well as a memorial symbol of the Southern dead from the War.)
 
But others are hoisting the flag as the symbol for their à-la-carte (humm, what is on the menu? LOL!) application of federal law. As a counterargument, one only needs to review the rationales that accompanied the states' ordinances of secession and the Confederate Constitution: Slavery trumped states' rights as the cause for the war. (To give the writer credit, at least he didn't bore us all with the litany of cut-and-paste history that usually accompanies articles like this one.)

For countless others, the flag is a symbol of oppression that was resurrected in the decades after it was furled at Appomattox Courthouse. Hate groups, segregationists, and opponents of the civil rights movement, including certain Southern states, appropriated the flag and used it to intimidate. (Humm, yeah, look at how those bigots misused and misappropriated an honorable American symbol to promote their sick, twisted ideology. I can especially see the pain and hurt in that last photo.)

Segregationists....check.
Opponents of Civil Rights....check.
Misuse by Hate Groups....Double Check.

Some of these states, including Georgia, eventually yielded to public pressure and removed the battle flag from their state banners. (If by "public pressure" Mr. Bradley actually means: removed because of a State Legislature that took matters into their own hands at the complaints of angry "civil rights" groups promoting a pro-racist ideology regarding that flag over the objections of the vast majority of voters in their own districts, then the statement would probably be correct.) Mississippi has not. (Most likely because they allowed their citizens to vote on the matter, and the result was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping it across ethnic lines, but that's a dirty little secret that one.) South Carolina no longer flies the flag from atop its Statehouse but still has it on the grounds.

People have a First Amendment right to fly the flag, (They do indeed.) but common sense and compassion for the pain it causes should dictate otherwise. (And how exactly does indulging ignorance in favor of a wrong-thinking view of that flag promoted by racial bigots apply as "compassion" in any common sense application of logic? Strangely I never get a realistic response for that question, though I ask it time and time again. Certainly taking the time to educate, to teach the full history of that flag is better in the long run than simply handing it over to those who would continue to misuse it without a fight. That is what a REAL educator would do.) As Indiana Jones once said about another article of antiquity, "It belongs in a museum." (And recall the response: "So do you." That and the fact the original battle flags already are in museums just makes people who throw this argument around look even more foolish than they already seem to most learned people.)

Display the flag in museums with uniforms, weaponry, and other period artifacts. Unfurl it at reenactments. But eliminate it from official use. (I was unaware the bumper stickers, porches, and front bumper tags on cars constitutes "official use" in any way. Humm.)

I hope that by the bicentennial of the Civil War, the Rebel battle flag will be a long-tucked-away vestige of our history, an artifact used as a teaching tool. (Ah mercifully this train wreck is over!)

Now here is where those who honor that flag see a much different future than this misinformed fellow from Philly.

After close to 25 years of attacking that flag, the Opposition has failed to completely do away with its public display. Indeed, now it seems as if the tide of history is turning against them. In fifty years, it is my hope (and that of many other defenders of Confederate heritage and Southern identity) that noble banner of the American Southland will be feared by nobody and accepted fully as the cultural symbol that is has become to a great many people, and not just in the American South. 

It is my hope that by the bicentennial of the War Between The States, the Dixie Cross banner will be on display prominently and proudly by Southerners of all races and faiths who honor it properly. It is my further hope that in fifty years hence the misuse of it by racist bigots (if any still exist then, and sadly I fear given human nature they might) will be extinct, or otherwise no longer taken seriously by anyone, thanks in no small part to the efforts of noble Southern heritage defenders. 

Regardless if you believe that or not, there is one truth that is certain, the public display of that flag today is not going anywhere anytime soon. Those who honor that flag rightly as a symbol of identity and heritage will continue to move forward. There will continue to be public displays of that flag in various contexts in the decades to come, and by an increasing diverse group of Southern-born Americans and Confederate descendants alike.

That is the reality.

I have two bumper stickers. One with a Dixie Cross banner that reads: I am A Proud Descendant Of A Brave Confederate Soldier. The other reads: Coexist.
 
I would suggest - using a little Southern Fried Common Sense - that the best thing to do would be for those who disapprove of that flag's display to accept that fact and find some way to come to mutually acceptable terms with those who honor that flag for all the right reasons, and ultimately find proper common sense solutions where everyone can coexist and nobody has to be offended, or forced to feel guilty about who they are as a people.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Night Sky Photography -- 04-20/21/22- 2015 -- Luna & Venus Passing In Sky

The following photos I took over a three day period documenting the passing of Venus and Luna in the night sky. I was fortunate to have good weather conditions all three days. The photographs were all taken between 8:20 PM to 8:45 PM EST.

Unfortunately, on the last day (April 22) there was cloud cover after I took the last photograph, and then rainy conditions, so I was unable to get any photos of the Lyrid Meteor Shower at its peak that evening.


Saturday, April 11, 2015

In Memory Of Those Who Wore The Blue And The Gray


"After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources."
                                                     ~General Robert E. Lee (CSA)


150 Years Ago This Weekend, The American Civil War (War Between The States) 1861- 1865 Officially Ended When Confederate General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia near Appomattox Court House on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865 to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

However, fighting would continue elsewhere. Confederate General Joseph Johnston would later surrender the  Army of Tennessee, the second-largest effective Confederate army, to Union General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina, on April 26. There were still soldiers in the field.

On May 4, Confederate General Richard Taylor surrendered the 12,000 men serving in the Confederate Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. Then, on May 12–13, more than a month after Appomattox, the last battle of the Civil War took place at Palmito Ranch, Texas. Confederate General Kirby Smith, head of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, wanted to keep fighting afterward, but Confederate General Simon B. Buckner surrendered for him on May 26.

On June 23, the last holdout, Confederate General Stand Waite, surrendered in Indian Territory (present day US State of Oklahoma) to Union Colonel Asa C. Matthews. However, the war at sea went on until November, when the last Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Shenandoah, learning of the surrender of Lee's Army from captured newspapers, finally surrendered to British authorities in Liverpool, England on November 6, 1865. Its flag, a Confederate Second National "Stainless Banner" was the last Confederate flag to fly in any "official" capacity as the banner of a sovereign nation. 

This post is dedicated not to that ugly and terrible war, but to the memory, the courage, the sacrifices, the individual lives, the devotion to duty, and the overall legacy of the brave American citizen soldiers - Union And Confederate - who served their respective governments and in defense of their homelands; to those who died and to those that survived those four dishonorable years of this nation's history, and ultimately won an honored place in the hearts and the heritage honored by their living descendants.

God Bless America -- South, North and West.

United Confederate Veterans (UCV) Reunion.
United Confederate Veterans In Parade.
Union Veterans, Grand Army Of The Republic (GAR) Reunion.
Grand Army Of The Republic Review.
GAR And UCV Veterans At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. July 1913.
The 50th Anniversary of the Battle.
Former Enemies - Now American Veterans And Brothers:
Billy Yank
And Johnny Reb Meeting At The Stone Wall,
Gettysburg, PA. July 3, 1913
Two American Veterans.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. July 3, 1938. The 75th Anniversary
of the Battle. Aged Union And Confederate Veterans Shaking
Hands For The Final Time Across The Stone Wall.
Honoring The Confederate Dead.
Honoring The Union Dead.
Union Soldier's Graves.
Confederate Soldier's Graves.
Joint Reburial of Union and Confederate Dead.
USCT Reenactors Rifle Salute.
CSA Reenactors Uncovered To Honor The Dead.
Reenactors Praying.
Heritage, History, And Memory.
Two American Banners: One Honoring The United States,
The Other Southern Cultural Identity.



         In Honor And In Memory Of Those Who Wore The Confederate Gray And The Union Blue.
1861-1865.  

We Will Never Forget.

Sunday, April 05, 2015

Night Sky Photography -- 04-04-2016 -- Easter Full Moon!

These are three of the photos I took of the First Full Moon of spring, 2015. I managed to get a good shot of the moon over the Chester First Baptist Church and the glowing cross, which I found appropriate since it was Easter weekend. 

I hope y'all enjoy them.

Friday, April 03, 2015

Common Sense On Honoring Southern Unionists




Common Sense On Honoring Southern Unionists 
 Do They Deserve To Be Honored?

By C. W. Roden


This blog post is dedicated to those men from the South who choose to remain loyal to the Union, or who - like their fellow Pro-Confederate Southerners - simply wanted to be left alone. It is to their memory and those of their descendants and the descendants of their fellow Southerners loyal to Dixie and our shared Southern Heritage.


Earlier this month there was a somewhat interesting exchange of thoughts online about Southern heritage and how some view remembering certain individuals from the parts of the American Southland who served in the War Between The States (1861- 1865).

This debate was not about those who wore the hallowed gray and butternut of the Confederate soldier - at least not directly - rather it was about the little-told story of Southern-born men and boys who wore the Union blue uniform of the United States and fought against their "rebellious" neighbors -- and in many cases their own family.

The debate began with THIS article dated March 28th. 

The article titled: Romance of the Confederacy written by one Josh Gelernter, starts out with the odious tagline: It's time the South dropped it in favor of a batter part of its heritage. 

Mr. Gelernter starts out by discussing a court case concerning license plates in Texas and then pointing out his own Confederate ancestry and pedigree as justification for his case against the Dixie Cross banner. Not the first Southern-born supporter of the Righteous Cause Myth to do such a thing by and means, and sadly he won't likely be the last, but I digress.

Moving on to the second paragraph of the article, Mr. Gelerner is quoted:

"That war killed about three-quarters of a million Americans, and the Stars and Bars are the symbol of the men responsible — regardless of its having also been a symbol of men who were just trying to defend their homes."

Let's begin with the obvious mistake here. He uses the term "Stars and Bars" to identify the Confederate flag -- a fact which belies his claims of understanding and education since it has been noted that informed people know that the Stars and Bars is not the Dixie Cross banner. I pointed that fact out myself several times on this blog. As for the first part, where he mentioned the war killed three-quarters of a million Americans....Um, I think he overlooked the fact that of those numbered about forty percent of those Americans were in fact the same men who carried the Confederate battle flag into battle.

I take it you folks are beginning to see the obvious here?

After that -- while attempting to sound reasonable rather than condescending, which he fails at miserably - Mr. Gelerner proceeds to talk about how over 110,000 Southern men fought for the Union. Or as he puts it, how one in ten Southerners fought against slavery rather than for it.

Then Mr. Gelerner makes the suggestion directly to Southerners who honor their Confederate ancestry (again as he claims to continue doing so). He points out that he understands the inclination of Confederate soldier's great-great-grandchildren to glorify their great-great-grandfathers -- and yes folks, he thinks folks actually accept that statement at face value. 

The magnanimous bastard even goes on to concede an obvious point: that Confederate soldiers were not Nazis. Uh....duh! That face is pretty much obvious to anyone else with even a rudimentary understanding of history who isn't a complete Leftist ideologue, or an utter brain-numbed moron.

Mr. Gelerner -- after offering up some brief details on the service of Southern Unionists -- conclude his piece with:

"But every few years, when a battle breaks out over the Confederate flag, I can’t help thinking that it’s time that the South, en bloc, abandoned the Confederacy and embraced the heritage of southern Unionists. Your average adult southerner today has between 128 and 256 ancestors who were alive during the Civil War. Statistically, it’s very likely that some of those ancestors were...." 

Well folks, at this point he starts reciting campfire songs about justifications for the destruction and plunder of a wide stretch of Southern Georgia and the article ends on that low note.

Let me pause here to go empty my bowels.

Okay, I'm back. 

Now then, a few days after Mr. Gelerner's article about picking and choosing one aspect of Southern heritage in favor of some aspects over another came THIS article in response, dated March 31st.

This article, written by Thomas DiLorenzo, begins with a simple question: "Should the Polish people memorialize fellow Poles who collaborated with the Soviets?"  

The answer to which is plainly obvious -- at least to Mr. DiLorenzo.

The rest is a rather well-written rebuttal that pretty much destroys Mr. Gelerner's suggestions and points out their obvious failings. He also throws in some modern views of the War and some of his own personal political bends into the story. Regardless, it was well written.

Still, rather than let Mr. DiLorenzo completely off the hook, I would like to go back to his opening statement, an obvious comparison between Polish collaborators who sided with the invading Soviet who stayed long after liberating Poland from Nazi occupation and installed their own puppet government, and Southern Unionists. He argues against honoring Southern Unionists.

In this case, Mr. DiLorenzo is in error much like Mr. Gelerner was in his assertions that the heritage of Southern Unionists should replace Confederate heritage, but for entirely different reasons.

Allow me to explain why.


So Who Were These Pro-Southern Unionists?

Before the War Between The States broke out, before the Southern States actually seceded, the issues that divided America likewise divided the people of America, and not always along the Mason-Dixon Line.

Slavery certainly caused much of the problem, both morally and in terms of political power between the North and the South. That has been well documented in terms of several territorial acts after the War of 1812, US Supreme Court cases like: DredScott vs Sandford (1857), "Bleeding Kansas" and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859.

Also certainly the differences between the North and South were likewise caused over the issue of how both saw federal power and State sovereignty. Some believing that only local government can understand local issues. Some believing that the union itself was made up of sovereign and independent States and a federal government that was limited by the US Bill of Rights, no different than the original Articles of Confederation after the American Revolutionary War. Others believing that in order for the United States to maintain its place as a free and powerful nation it must have a strong government like other world powers.

Ultimately those two main causes fueled a fire that finally exploded on April 12, 1861 when the newly formed Confederate States exerted what it perceived its sovereign authority to drive away a foreign occupation of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. The US government, which continued to see Fort Sumter as Federal property, retaliated by calling for 75,000 volunteers to put down a "rebellion" in the South.

Naturally views on how individual Americans saw duty, loyalty and honor were just as divided, and geography was not always a determining factor.

Even today, many people still believe the idea that people in the Northern and the Southern States both followed the loyalties of the side each State choose to support. This is far from the truth.

In the North, particularly in Southern Illinois and various places along the Ohio River Valley, many northern-born Americans actively supported the Confederate States, even joined Confederate military units in Kentucky and Tennessee. The States of Kentucky, Missouri, Western Virginia, Maryland and Delaware were all heavily divided, and sent soldiers to both Union and Confederate armies.

In several Southern States loyalties were very divided in the Appalachian regions of Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and some parts of Northern Alabama. Some of these people - particularly people German and some Scots-Irish descent - remained loyal to the US government, much like American Loyalists a generation earlier remained to the British Empire during the American Revolutionary War. 

One of the Union's most brilliant generals, Major General George Henry Thomas, was a Virginian who stayed with the Union because he supported the idea of a strong federal government - a decision that would ultimately lead to his family disowning him during and after the War ended. 

Certainly a large number of black Southerners joined the ranks of the Union army. An estimated 178,000 black Americans overall were a part of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). This fact is well documented today. 

Among white Southerners, the numbers of men who served in the Union military come close to around 100,000. These are the estimates of that number from each Confederate State: 

Alabama: 3,000
Arkansas: 10,000
Florida: 3,500
Georgia: 400
Louisiana: 7,000
Mississippi: 545
North Carolina: 25,000
Tennessee: 42,000 
Texas: 2,200
Virginia & West Virginia: 22,000 


What Motivated Pro-Union Southerners?

The question of loyalty to either cause depended on the mindsets of the time.

America was a vastly different place in the 1860s. People then were much like people today, but we must be careful not to attribute the same specific desires and attitudes of today.

In the American Southland, mostly small rural communities with negligible government interference and policing, they were often more responsible for their own security and safety. Based on their social structure, Southerners lived by a clear and simple moral code. Concepts like right, wrong, and kinship were certainly much stronger then than they are today in America.

Those who followed the Confederacy, for the most part, were fiercely independent minded individuals, who regarded loyalty and duty to home and close kin more strongly than duty to State, or government. To these men and boys they saw the North and the Union as literally a foreign entity very far away wanting to impose the will of the leaders on the people, while their personal code of honor would never accept that.

Those Southerners who followed the Union believed strongly in national identity, in a rule of law that was less a form of anarchy that their Confederate neighbors and family accepted. Or, in some cases, such as the Southern Unionists in the Appalachian regions, they were so fiercely independent that they saw the Confederate government as a closer and more intrusive threat to their individual liberties than the far-off Union government in Washington D.C. Many of these people simply declared their neutrality and remained so until the Confederate State governments imposed conscription.

Slavery was sometimes a factor, though a small number of pro-Union Southerners were themselves slaveowners, while a number of pro-Confederate Southerners from the same region were not. Many of these Southern Unionist's slaves continued to remain slaves until the end of the war because the Emancipation Proclamation did not specifically apply to their cases. Others were freed willingly by their owners only after the proclamation went into effect in 1863. Including many members of the United States Colored Troops, some of those same Unionist slaves served side-by-side with their Southern Unionist masters in the war, little different that the slaves and freemen who served in the Confederate army....a topic we will explore in detail at a later date.  

These Southerners who remained loyal to the Union often times suffered brutally at the hands of their Confederate neighbors for their allegiance. The best example of this being the infamous Shelton Laurel Massacre. This is not to say that these Southern Unionists were all angels of virtue either. Southern Unionists likewise committed their fair share of war crimes against their pro-Confederate brothers and sisters. Incidents such as the Wilson Massacre and the Huntsville Massacre are testament to the fact that during the War Between The States neither side walked away entirely as the pillars of honor and virtue. 

Indeed, many of y'all might recall from a previous blog post that several of my own family and Confederate ancestors were themselves murdered in cold blood by some of these Southern Unionist. 

Some of these Southern Unionists were in fact former Confederate soldiers who deserted for various reasons. Some of them simply to protect their own homes from what they began to see as a Confederate government that was more intrusive than the far away Union government, particularly in terms of conscription. Others because they were disgusted with the fact that the Confederate government exempted rich plantation owners and their families from service. It should be noted in their defense however that both sides had exemptions and "substitute policies" and that many Union soldiers likewise deserted the army because they were disgusted with such policies. The "rich man's war and poor man's fight" class warfare argument was universal throughout the conflict. 

Then there were those Confederate prisoners of war held in Northern prisons like Camp Douglass and Elmira Prison who swallowed the dog and took the Oath of Loyalty to the Union. These men were offered the choice of remaining in prison till the end of the war, or to join the Union army out west to fight the Native American populations and maintain the US outposts in the Dakotas and Wyoming. Many of these men did, becoming what are termed as "Galvanized Yankees" to escape the harsh and brutal conditions imposed on Confederate prisoners of war. Knowing what I know of those conditions, this blogger could not find fault with their decisions, not everyone can be a diehard rebel. 

A Common Sense Solution 

Following the end of the War Between The States and the Reconstruction Era, the memory of these Southern Unionists largely began to fade away, or were overlooked except in local folklore. In an ironic way, the memory of these Southern loyalists was little different than the memory of those Black Confederates who served in the War, until the last couple of decades. Although unlike some of these Black Confederates who actually remained honored and well respected by some of the former white Confederate Veterans in spite of the rise of Jim Crow racism in America, Southern Unionists found themselves completely edited out of the region's history, with few exceptions.

More than anyone else, I have a huge justification for wanting to hate the memory of those Southern Unionists given my family history.

Yet, I do not.

Largely because I do not believe in the "sins of the fathers" concept, nobody is their ancestor. I respect my own Confederate great-great-grandfather; but while I honor the person he was and those aspects of him that are a part of my genetic makeup, I am not him. I cannot personally claim any honor he earned for himself, or for any hypothetical crime he may have committed during his lifetime. As such I could never condemn, or hate the descendants of those Union soldiers and the Southern Unionists that fought against him either. 

I do not agree that these people should be edited out of Southern history anymore than I support calls for the removal of Confederate monuments and the condemning of Confederate symbols. If anything I see them as two sides of the same coin, and I am disgusted with the suggestion that either deserves their memory condemned. 

Southern Unionists are as much a part of out shared and diverse Southern heritage as Confederate soldiers, Scots-Irish Patriots of the American Revolutionary War, Nat Turner, grits, Coca-Cola, sweet iced tea, kudzu, ect. To ignore that is disingenuous.

One cannot omit any piece of Southern heritage -- either positive or negative -- and claim a love for it. This is the argument that those of us who honor the Confederate heritage part of that heritage promote. We condemn those who seek to destroy the memory of the Confederate soldier or erase his memory to promote an unsavory modern-day politically correct agenda. But in doing so, we cannot cherry pick Southern heritage as a whole and condemn the memories of others, even those who fought against our Confederate ancestors. 

I agree and support the idea that Southern Unionists should be honored, but only for the right reasons. At the same time I reject the idea that Confederate statues should be sacrificed in order to make room for monuments to others, simply to promote the national sin of political correctness. There is more than enough room on our city squares, courthouses, state capitols and other places for monuments, or plaques to Southern-born Union veterans without having to damn the memory of other honored Southern heroes and American veterans.

Thursday, April 02, 2015

My Day Trip To Greenville, SC. Part Two -- The Greenville Zoo


After leaving the TD Convention Center and SC Comic Con 2015  behind, I went to a nearby Waffle House to refuel and then made my way over to the beautiful Greenville Zoo.

While the Greenville Zoo may not be as large as the Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens in Columbia, SC, I was taken with how clean and well maintained it was, particularly the Reptile House. There was plenty of shade for the animals, and their habitats were cared for professionally. The gift shop was also wonderful and I found a nifty Christmas tree ornament to go with my collection.

The only complain I have about the place was the limited parking for both the zoo and the nearby park. It took about half an hour of circling before I could finally locate a parking space, so I would recommend any potential visitors to arrive earlier in the morning, possibly before 11 AM or so. Other than that, I had a wonderful time viewing the amazing animals on display.

The following are photos taken from my two hour afternoon stay at the Greenville Zoo. 

Please enjoy. 


Following my trip to the zoo, I bid a good afternoon to the city of Greenville, SC and took the hour and a half drive back to Chester County. 

Between the SC Comic Con and the Greenville Zoo, I have to say it was an afternoon well spent.