Olustee Project: Researching the Battlefield in Person.

      Even though, it does not often happen with me and researching a battlefield, it is always nicer to get the perspective on the grounds themselves. Kalissa and I were returning home after I took my father out to sea for his final resting place. Along with my brother, we had actually a great weekend of fishing out on Tampa Bay. Usually, our father out fished us there. Maybe, we were not as threatening as our dad was to the fish. Who knows. Since Kalissa and I do not really have much of a reason to return to Florida for a while, we took a slight detour on the way home.
   Our destination was the Battlefield of Olustee, Fl. off of I-10. It actually did not make much of a difference on the way home back to Fayetteville, NC. We had left two hours earlier than I normally would have and the whole battlefield walk was about an hour and a half. It was really nice to see it in person, though, I was a little disappointed that the museum part did not hold to many relics of the battle. I was hoping for a few battle flag references and such to help modelling my miniatures. Also, as a surprise, they have the battlefield and then, the re-enactment battlefield next to it. This works as a benefit to my project as well as a problem. The benefit is that I can have a little more artistic freedom for the terrain. The problem might be giving away some accuracy to the battle. I might be looking too deep into this, since I plan on trying to out-do any previous attempts to model this battlefield for a convention game. Anyway, here were the photos we took of the battlefield. Enjoy!

Kalissa had mentioned Spanish moss in southern pine trees. My assumption was that they had it further south in Florida.

I thought this was interesting for modelling the ends of a snake rail fence.

This was before you hiked the trail. I am sure this was designed for pic-nicks and such.

The wet area of the field.

This is what the re-enactment field looks like.

Then, this is more like they would have found through during most of the battle.

I read nothing about this until the park.