Blogs from Montgomery, Alabama, United States, North America

Nancy and I usually seek to break up the winter and travel somewhere in February. This year we decided to travel south. With the recent anniversaries of boycotts, marches and actions, organizations offer Civil Rights tours these days. We thought we could plan our own. We headed via 81 south from Pennsylvania towards Nashville. Compared to interstates 95 and 76, traffic was light. Our plan was to stay downtown; we spent enough time in the car and wanted to be able to walk to the action without driving. We stayed in the Marriott, which fit the bill. Although Nashville was a location for early civil rights lunch counter sit-ins, we mostly looked at other stuff. Music is the thing in Nashville; not only Country and Western, but for recording and performing in general. The main street, ... read more

Sorry we haven't updated in so long. We've just been either too busy or too tired to post. Yesterday we left Laredo and landed in Sulphur LA. My brother lives there so we visited with him and I met my nephew Vance for the first time. I bought Jill some Tex Mex last night, which she was pretty happy about, and then we went to bed early. This morning started out fine but we were hit with a storm just before Baton Rouge and it stayed with us all the way to Montgomery. It rained so often and so hard that a lot of the time we could only drive 40 mph. Because of that we were on the road almost ten hours today. Anyway, we're settled into our room and will leave early in the ... read more

Geo: 32.3801, -86.3006This will be our last night on the road for this trip. We head for Florida tomorrow. The plan for today was to drive from Jackson, MS to Montgomery, AL. It is a shorter distance than we usually do in a day, so we decided to add a detour to Birmingham. We left Jackson at 9:05 AM and a chilly 48 degrees (does it really get that cold down here?)…another genes day for sure. The drive took us over I-20, very straight, pretty flat, and through an alley of tall trees most of the way. Like yesterday, the hardwoods are fading and showing a punch of yellow and taupe, but nothing spectacular. (After living through 50 autumns in Maine, it fails to impress.) So we didn't see much along the way. Sometimes it makes ... read more

Day 15 May 18, 2013 I got good nights sleep, which was welcome after last evening’s debacle. The two visitor centers in the French Quarter didn’t open until 9 am so I didn’t have to rush out the door like I have been. When I checked the weather, today was going to be hot in New Orleans and warm with thunderstorms in Selma, Alabama, which is where I was headed. It wasn’t shaping up to be a wiz-bang day. When I checked the website of the two National Historical Trail interpretive centers in Selma and White Hall (I can learn from my mistakes – I should have checked yesterday) I discovered that they close at 4:30 and that the Selma interpretive center is closed Sundays. There was an alert on the web site that stated the ... read more

After another sweet Chanticleer Inn and B&Bbreakfast of waffles, whipped cream, fresh fruit, coffee and assorted breads we waddled out of the inn to begin our trip to Montgomery, AL. Montgomery Alabama. I had hoped to have time to explore Birmingham on our way south but on our tight schedule I would have had to give up something in Montgomery and there was already so much to see in a day and a half that I decided we should focus our energies in Montgomery instead. I am glad we did! We arrived just in time to tour the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum before it closed. I had no idea that Zelda was a very talented and troubled young woman. F. Scott fell in love with her at an early age and after two years ... read more