Sweet Home Alabama (#45)

In June of 2007, our family was living in the twilight zone. Phil and Austin were living in the house in Michigan, while Jacob and I were living in our newly purchased house in Texas. We drove to Michigan as soon as Jacob got out of school for the summer and I "traded" vehicles with Phil so I could load up the van and head back to Texas. At this time I had been to 44 states and Washington DC and was missing three southern states. I took the opportunity and headed straight south from Michigan, picking up the Natchez Trace Parkway in Nashville and heading southwest toward Louisiana. When I got to Alabama, I turned east and headed for I-65 where I turned south toward my main destination...Birmingham.

I had read that Alabama had several covered bridges and decided to explore the east side of I-65 above Birmingham and visit a few. Most were in very haphazard shape, but one I found thoroughly intriguing near Oneonta. The Horton Mill Covered bridge is a town lattice truss bridge and considered the highest covered bridge above a US waterway towering 70 feet above the small river. Parking was very limited, so I parked out on the main road and scurried down to the bottom to see just how high this bridge really was. As I looked up from the river, I was glad I had already ventured across the bridge and back, because there was no way I was going back over it now...it looked like a covered bridge perched on toothpicks!

On my way into Birmingham I discovered one of the prettiest barns I have ever seen up on a hillside. I stopped to take pictures and the owner came over and struck up a conversation with me and offered to let me go into the barn to see the inside. He told me that the barn and property had been in his family for three generations and that they often had people from all over the US stopping to take pictures...I wasn't a bit surprised.

It had started raining by the time I found the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham. I watched the short movie about the history of the pig smelting facility and ventured outside and took the self guided tour. It started to pour and I found myself playing hide and seek with the raindrops navigating through the various stages of pig iron smelting.


After my enjoyable tour at Sloss Furnaces, I headed to the highest point in the city to visit Vulcan. Built in 1904 as a tribute to Birmingham's iron roots, Vulcan is considered the worlds largest cast iron statue and underwent a complete multimillion dollar renovation in 1999. The park surrounding the colossal statue had a nice museum and it was a great place to picnic. The statue is open late and I thought an evening visit to the top of the 56 foot statue for a panoramic view of the city would have been another great option.

My day was fleeting fast, but I had just
enough time to head down I-59 towards Tuscaloosa for a stop at the Tannehill State Historic Park with more than forty-five historic buildings from its heyday as a bustling ironworks town. The staggering number of sites and activities included a museum, gristmill, farm, candy store and a small railroad as well as camping and cabin rentals. A great place to explore.