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.

Gateway to the West-Nebraska (#27)

I used to consider Nebraska a mere pass through state...A necessary evil to labor across to get to the good states, on either side. Then again I never took the time to stop here before. This time I would stop, my destinations - Carhenge, Scotts Bluff National Monument and camping at Lake Minatare SNA-Home of Nebraska's only lighthouse...my thought was that anyplace with a lighthouse couldn't be all that bad. Nebraska was so much more than I originally expected and I hope to return someday and see more of this All-American state.

My first surprise was prompted by a highway sign directing tourists to an original Pony Express Station. I ventured off I-80 at Gothenburg and followed the signs. While the Station was indeed the real deal, it had been moved from the original Pony Express Route about eight miles south of the highway. No matter, the road to the station was lined with historic homes in spring flower bloom and just off the highway was another surprise...a sod house museum. It was a quick visit but it was time to get back on the road and head to my camping destination - Lake Minatare just outside of Scottsbluff. I got hopelessly lost trying to find this lovely camping area, my GPS unit failed me and my husband Phil's attempts to direct me via cell and the Internet brought him nothing but borderline hysteria from me. What Phil had realized and I could not wrap my brain around was that there were a couple of identical intersections within Scottsbluff. Near dusk I finally found the campground with just enough time to climb to the top of the lighthouse and find a spot to bed down for the night. Ordeal over.

The GPS was back to its old
self in the morning and we arrived at Scotts Bluff National Monument just as the park road and museum were opening. After a lovely conversation with the NPS staff, I headed to the top of the bluff on Summit Road, the oldest concrete road in Nebraska they informed me. I was alone at the top, except for mule deer and a rabbit and the wind howled like a locomotive. I walked to both north and south overlooks and was astounded by the starkness the pioneers must have encountered a century and a half ago. Way off in the distance I could see Chimney Rock, a landmark pioneers used to mark their halfway point to Oregon.

I traveled back to the museum and took the path to walk part of the Oregon Trail. While researching our genealogy several years ago, we discovered that Phil's family had taken the Oregon Trail and had lived in the same two vicinities as Phil - one hundred years apart of each other. Oh what a thrill to have walked where ancestors may have walked! Interesting too was that The Mormon Trail, California Trail and Pony Express all converged here at Mitchell Pass. I had used Chimney Rock as a landmark to find my way here and the whole experience sent chills through my body.

It was time to head north with one short side trip to Alliance for
a visit to Carhenge. The town of Alliance was a quaint little town with great architecture. It was obvious this community took a lot of pride in their bustling downtown. I stopped to take pictures and a woman stopped to chat with me about the buildings and gave me a brief history of them and the town, the county seat. She told me to drive down to the county courthouse and see the decorative brackets along the roofline and I passed the old movie theater with its original neon.

Carhenge was just north of town in an open field. This was an outdoor sculpture like no other I have encountered. It was hard to pull myself away from this place and several other cars stopped and walked around spellbound like me. There are several Stonehenge replicas around the US...why I do not know...why are we drawn to them? I've visited two in Texas at Odessa and Hunt. Texas also may have Carhenges' inspiration - Cadillac Ranch with ten Caddies buried nose down...someone asked me if I considered it art.
Of course I do, and I am thrilled that this time I stopped to discover that Nebraska is definately not a mere pass through state.