Rainy Weather

Our Week in Alabama

Wednesday, March 11. Travel day to Montgomery Alabama. Along the way we made an interesting detour to Mt. Olive West Baptist Church. Hank Williams attended church here as a young boy and developed his love of gospel music. This is a stop that would appeal only to those with an interest in country music. I recall listening to Hank Williams on the radio in the 1940’s prior to the days of TV. Songs like Jambalaya, Your Cheating Heart, You Win Again still resonate.

Gunter Hill, a COE park is where we decided to stay for a few days while checking out Montgomery.

We started by taking a tour of the Hyundai Auto factory, Montgomery’s largest employer. This is an example of what American industry can and should be. It’s highly automated, unbelievably clean to be a manufacturing facility, union free, and focused on quality. Their production is down only two percent during this troubled time.

Day two, we visited downtown sites including the State Capital, the Hank Williams Museum, The First Whitehouse of the Confederacy (The Capital of the Confederacy was moved to Richmond, VA after only three months to be nearer the center of Conflict activity), Hank Williams final resting place in Oakwood Cemetery and Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Martin Luther King was Pastor before moving to Atlanta. For lunch we stopped at Chris’ where we enjoyed Hank’s favorite Loaded Dogs (mustard, onions, sauerkraut, and Chris’ secret chili sauce), fries and bottled coke. Chris’ has been in business at the same location since 1917 so they must be doing something right.

Day three, we traveled to Selma AL for a day tour. Selma was not what I expected. This is a town that I could enjoy spending multiple days in. The downtown area is loaded with well preserved and restored homes and businesses (over 1250 in the historic area) dating to the civil war era and before. Of course, there’s also lots of civil rights, voter rights etc. stuff around the town too. For those who were around in 1965, you may remember that the Edmund Pettus Bridge was the sight where the voting rights march to the capital began. If you’re inclined, this would probably make a good subject for some bedtime reading to brush up on some 1960’s civil rights history.

Now that we're overloaded with country music, how about some good western stuff? Frank and Jessy James stayed here when stopped in Selma. How's this for good western stuff?

It's raining cats and dogs. It's time to move on to get away from this.

The Question is:

The question most ask is where are you and what have you been doing. For an answer, let's back up a few days. We left Lake Conroe, TX on Monday March 2nd and drove to Lake Charles, LA where we stayed at Sam Houston Jones State Park once again. The drive was short so we did some geocaching in the afternoon. Tuesday we traveled on to Chicot State Park near Ville Platte, LA following the Zydeco Cajun Prairie Scenic Byway. We spent a couple of days touring Ville Platte, Opelousas, and Eunice LA. It seems that every small town in Louisiana is the capital of something or other. Ville Platte is the "Swamp Pop Capital of the World", whatever that is!! It's also the "Smoked Meat Capital of the World". A little further searching turned up the headquarters for "Slap Ya Mama". This has been one of our favorite Cajun seasonings for several years so happening across their offices and company store in Ville Platte was a special treat. We dropped in, had a nice visit and left with what is likely to turn out to be a life time supply of every available flavor of "slap Ya Mama" from very hot to V E R Y HOT. Interestingly, for those of us old enough to remember, Sears Roebuck sold houses and cars back in the day. "Slap Ya Mama" has their corporate offices in a 1914 Sears Roebuck house pictured here.

In Eunice, we visited the Cajun Music Hall of Fame and the Jean Lafitte Prarie Acadian Cultural Center. Both of these are fascinating stops. For us, we're finally getting to connect some dots that we started on when visiting Nova Scotia several years ago. Many of the French speaking peoples that first populated this area of LA in the mid 1700's originally lived in Nova Scotia. When they refused to swear allegiance to England, the British forced them to leave. They were loaded on ships and delivered to various ports along the US east coast and to New Orleans.

Thursday was a short travel day. We followed more of the scenic byways to Fontainebleau State Park which is on the North shore of Lake Pontchartrain. From here we see the New Orleans sky line across the lake. Our current plan is to spend the next few days visiting New Orleans, touring one or more of the plantations along the Mississippi and eating some Creole food. More later!