My trip to the Heart of Dixie started as a joke. Alabama was the last Southern state that I had yet to visit, and it seemed unlikely that I would ever get there unless I made a special trip for the sole purpose of checking it off my list of all 50 states. The itinerary for the latest road trip on which my father and I embarked started in Birmingham, AL and ended in New Orleans, LA. In between, we encountered sleepy Southern towns; white sand beaches in Pensacola, FL; and small beach communities along the Gulf Coast.
Birmingham, AL
Sloss Furances National Historic Landmark. Produced iron for the city for nearly 90 years
Montgomery, AL
Kitchen of the Dexter Parsonage Museum, the house where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived from 1954 to 1960 while he worked at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Coretta Scott King supposedly knew her husband was not coming back from Memphis (where he was shot and killed) because he sent her fake flowers instead of real ones for the first time.
Montgomery, AL
The bathroom in the F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum (yes, they used it!)
Monroeville, AL
Monroe County Courthouse, inspiration for the courthouse scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, in the hometown of Harper Lee and Truman Capote
Ocean Springs, MS
Alligator in the bayou at Gulf Islands National Seashore
New Orleans, LA
New Orleans, LA
Posing with Sandra Bullock’s trash outside her house in the Garden District