Alabama - Day 8 - driving south to Birmingham

Tannehill Ironworks State Historical Park, McCalla
Sunday, 8 December 2019

today's route

This morning I found I had 2 mosquito bites.  In December.  I know I'm in the South but that seems just rude.

I passed a small pickup truck with 2 goats in the rear bed inside a large dog crate.  They didn't look happy.  But they did look odd.

I passed Smarty Plants Nursery.  Americans seem endlessly creative with their names.

I passed a pretty good-sized herd of cows in a field near the road that were all plodding in the same direction, which was in the opposite direction from all the farm buildings.  I wondered if they were actually going somewhere real or if one of the cows just got the wild idea to go to the other side of the field and all the others copied him/her.

I spent maybe an hour driving through the Bankhead National Forest, one of 4 national forests in Alabama.  This time of year the forest was mostly bare - it seemed to be primarily deciduous trees with some pines.  The forest is home to Sipsey Fork, Alabama's only National Wild and Scenic River.

It also includes the Sipsey Wilderness, which is something of a misnomer I think because the area was once logged.  But apparently the second growth of hemlock and mountain laurel is coming in well and there are a number of hiking trails through there.  It's called the Land of 1000 Waterfalls so is probably very scenic.

The road was mostly climbing and mostly a series of s-curves.  When the trees are leaved in the spring and summer, this is probably a beautiful place.  Occasionally to my left I got a view of mountains in the distance.  I don't think of Alabama as mountainous country, but clearly I was wrong.

I'm seeing Alabama state flags everywhere.  I saw one veranda-type porch that had 4 state flags hanging from the railing.  At the top of a high hill I saw a very large state flag flying from a flagpole next to a sign: Join Today.  Join what?  And farther along the road I saw yet another of these flags on top of a hill next to what looked like a big warehouse.

For a while I thought these were Confederate flags, and there's a reason I thought so: the state flag is based on the Confederate flag, as are those of several other southern states.

Alabama state flag

Confederate battle flag

In fact, I think the basic design Alabama uses now was used by the Confederacy, which apparently used many different designs during its 5 short years of existence.

The State of Alabama says it's the Cross of St. Andrew, who was said to have been crucified on a cross with this design.

Anyway, Alabamans seem to love their flag as much as Texans love theirs.

Much of the drive south took us up and down hills - a lot of hills.

I passed a sign for Widespread Taxidermy, which seemed an odd name for such a business.

I saw a billboard for Help4AL.com, advertising nonjudgmental help for opioid addictions.  Their website says they're a private nonprofit entity that seems to be affiliated with the state government.

I found myself on a bridge over a train track, covered by a long freight train with many cars full of coal.

There weren't any rest areas along the roads we took, and not any real towns either - they all seemed to be off the road a ways and I didn't want to go prospecting for someplace to stop and rest and walk the dogs.  But as we passed through the west side of Birmingham, I saw a large park with a ball field in a residential neighborhood, where I thought we could stop for a bit.

We did, and I walked the dogs around the park a bit, and we ate some lunch and just generally took a break from driving along the road.  I was interested in a house across the street from the park that had no windows at all on its front, and those I could see along the side were completely covered up.  There was a semi parked in the side yard, so maybe the home owner was a long-distance trucker who just wanted some peace and quiet.  But what it looked to me like was a meth lab or marijuana grow spot.

As I understand it, marijuana - even medical marijuana - is still illegal in Alabama, and CBD is only available to a small group of patients.  So maybe that's what it was.  It had 2 No Trespassing signs on either side of the front door and another on the side of the house, which made it look even more suspicious.  If I were doing something illegal I don't think I'd advertise it by making it look illegal.  Instead I'd make it look like Mary Sunshine's house and put a sign on the door saying Sleeping Baby or Seriously Ill Person, Do Not Disturb.  But that's just me.

This section of Birmingham had nice old houses but it all looked like it had seen better days - the sort of rundown look that says they'd fix things up if they had the money to do it.

Nearby I saw the large Fairfield Pipe Mill, which didn't look operational.  I looked it up and, in fact, it isn't operating.  It shut down in 2015 but their website says they're retooling the plant and will reopen soon, thanks to Pres. Trump's steel tariffs.  But if local employment has been curtailed for 4 years, that would explain the look of the neighborhood.

I also passed a closed Pepsi bottling plant nearby.

I saw a lot of license plates from South Carolina and Georgia and Florida.

Driving toward tonight's state park, I passed an old building with a sign saying it's the Tannehill Opry for Old Time Music.  They say they play country and gospel, no alcohol but they begin each evening with a prayer.

I passed this historical marker on the drive into the campground.  This is a historical park and has a museum and many artifacts from the days when it was an operating ironworks.

I passed this sign a little closer to the entrance of the campground and was really quite surprised.  I don't know who erected it or how it got placed here.  But I know that most of the signs around the campground have those ellipses (...) at the ends of the inscriptions for no reason that I can see, so maybe it was the campground people?