A very very nice park like landscape, in much better shape than I'd assumed given the debate about nearby development. Stonewall Jackson and all that, not that I can keep the lore straight, but having visited the battlefield may help. I've mostly stayed away from Civil War history...so why did it take the North so long to win given its material superiority? The area of operations is almost static in Virginia for the first three years of the war. I can think of the obvious explanations: a) the North was still mostly agricultural as well and war was not yet that material intensive, b) the South was large and softer in the West than in Virginia, c) mass losses were politically and militarily hard to take for the North, d) large operations from scratch take time, even years.
And yes, it is setting in which one can even photograph trees.
Update #1: since I could not remember (and it is not emphasized in the exhibits, not clear why), size of forces and losses in the First Battle of Manassas (First Battle of Bull Run), where most -- but not all - the photos below are from:
Union casualties were 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312 missing or
captured; Confederate casualties were 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13
missing. ...Strength figures vary by source. Eicher, p. 87-88: 35,000 Union, 32,000
Confederate; Esposito, map 19: 35,000 Union, 29,000 Confederate; Ballard,
35,000 Union (18,000 engaged), 34,000 Confederate (18,000 engaged);
Salmon, p. 20: 28,450 Union, 32,230 Confederate; Kennedy, p. 14: 35,000
Union, 33,000 Confederate; Livermore, p. 77: 28,452 Union "effectives",
32,323 Confederate engaged. Writing in The Century Magazine, adjutant generals James B. Fry cites 18,572 Union men (including stragglers not on the field) and 24 guns engaged, Thomas Jordan cites 18,052 Confederate men and 37 guns engaged.
Losses aren't as bad as I'd expected, but my standards may be different than those of the times. Also what does 'missing or captured' mean here for Union forces? How many walked away? It's my understanding that desertions in the Union army were in the same order of magnitude as losses, but there are obviously reporting issues, both for desertions and losses.

Update #1: Jody comments:
We were in Springfield this spring and the kids were intrigued by the "Civil War in Four Minutes" video there. Online, the music is more clearly overbearing, but in the small theater at the Lincoln Museum, it's not as easy to notice your emotions being played. In fact it was hard not to cry. The kids' first question: why does it look like the South is winning? My short answer: because the map zooms in on the south, so it looks like they've got all the territory, but they don't. Of course, that doesn't answer the question at all. I'm not an expert at all on the war, which is somewhat laughable (over-specialization), but if I had to guess, I'd say the war dragged on because of lack of political will for conquest in the north, extremely poor generalship (most of the best professional army men returned to their home states in the south), and the sheer physical challenges of re-taking southern territory. It took several years of economic strangulation (not to mention diplomacy in Europe to isolate the South) before physically re-claiming southern territory was realistic. And it took that long, too, to get generals capable of doing the job -- and then they did it by changing the "accepted rules" of warfare (although I've always wondered how much those rules had already gone out the window in Europe). One interpretation of the Emancipation Proclamation says that Lincoln had to do it because the "union men" had lost their will to fight for that cause by late 1862 and he had nothing left but to rally the abolitionists explicitly. I don't know if the letters from common soldiers support that assertion, but the Proclamation did bring in huge numbers of Black recruits and changed the motivations of black (slave) residents in southern territories, too. Did the Proclamation enable re-conquest, or signal that the generals were finally ready to do it? The classic (boring) test question, with the usual answer: a little of both. Or so I assume. I'm really wandering far from my comfort zone here. (Again, laughable. This is PRECISELY my period. But not my subject.) Oh, here's the video! http://www.maniacworld.com/civil-war-in-four-minutes.html Notice the moments in the video when there are no battles to speak of but the casualties are mounting fast. Typhoid in the camps, I assume.