Sweet Home Alabama?

We arrived in Alabama on March 8th and although we searched the internet for the "best small towns to visit", it seems our hearts weren't particularly excited about visiting any of them. We made a quick stop in Tuscaloosa (great name, isn't it?) so we could get one our grandson's a University of Alabama t-shirt and saw the exterior of the Paul Bryant stadium - home of the Crimson Tide. As two people who make a concerted effort to avoid eating at chain restaurants, we'd been seeing Waffle Houses all over the deep South. I thought they featured waffles and fried chicken, but later learned that wasn't true. We joked about them being the Awful Offal Waffle Houses. On arriving in Tuscaloosa, we decided to try one out. The food wasn't awful, but it wasn't great, either. We won't need to eat at another A.O. Waffle House in the future.

We headed to Selma the next day, stopping in the quaint little town of Demopolis. It was quite pretty, as are most of the small towns we drive through. Jim made the astute observation that in spite of the size of the towns, the churches and banks were often big and beautiful. The courthouses were usually also unique and beautiful. We can't count the number of pretty little towns we've seen.

Selma and the Civil Rights trail was the perfect antidote for all the old plantations and Southern 'charm' and manners. We visited the National Park Service's (NPS) Selma Interpretive Center in the city, walked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and spent time in the National Museum of Voting Rights. For those of you too young to remember, Selma was an important and critical starting point of the Civil Rights movement. On March 7, 1965, about 600 marchers walked non-violently across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were beaten back by law enforcement, much to the shock of the victims, nation and the world. Two days later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a symbolic march to the Bridge and turned back. Winning an injunction and the right to march, beginning on March 21st, some 3200 marchers finally walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery. Several months after their historic march, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The organizers and folks who marched often met in the Brown Chapel and the First Baptist churches in Selma. We visited both churches, in addition to spending time in the National Park Service's Interpretive Center in Selma and the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma. The museums were well done and the stories were both heartbreaking and inspiring.

We camped at the Paul M. Grist State Park, about 18 miles outside of town where the quiet was a welcome change from the previous night's traffic noise. The only downside of the lovely campsite came after Fergus killed a frog and suffered the consequences: he frothed and drooled and puked most of that evening. He did, however, learn to leave the next frog he encountered alone.

On our last full day in Alabama, we continued on the historic Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March highway, and stopped at another NPS Interpretive Center that was also extremely informative and well done. We skirted Birmingham, and as GPS idiots, we were reluctant to maneuver the RV throughbusy downtown streets and instead headed to Tuskegee. There, we visited the famous Tuskegee Institute and the George Washington Carver Museum, which is on the campus of the Institute. We completed our visit with a stop at Moton Field where the Tuskegee airmen trained as pilots for WWII. It was another day of learning more of our country's history.

We enjoyed our brief time in Alabama and learned more than we had from past history classes, etc. What's sad, however, is that the civil rights movement needs to continue - especially as it concerns voter and equal rights for all persons, especially those of color.

The Awful Offal Waffle House in Tuscaloosa