I left off Part One of this post on March 30 in Birmingham. On March 31, we had brunch at a French restaurant in downtown Birmingham, and then made the short two-hour drive to Montgomery, Alabama—and thank God it was a short drive, because there was an absolutely torrential thunderstorm going on the whole time. I'm used to living in the Northeastern US, where our thunderstorms are usually a summer thing and they last for like half an hour; apparently, in the South, they can last literally all day. I've never seen anything like the weather we had that day. It was pouring and thundering in Birmingham when we were eating breakfast and it continued literally for the rest of the day in Montgomery as well. But thankfully, we made it in one piece.
The rain never let up, all day long, but we tried to make the best of it and do some sightseeing anyway. Montgomery is so rich with history, especially regarding the Civil Rights movement, that there was a lot for us to see.
The First White House of the Confederacy
Dexter Parsonage Museum, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived from 1954-1960
Alabama State Capitol
Rosa Parks Memorial
The Civil Rights Memorial Center
The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. King was pastor
The bus stop from which Rosa Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Freedom Rides museum, in a former Greyhound bus station. Several of the Riders were severely injured at this bus station, including Congressman John Lewis, by the white mob that was waiting for them.
The house where Zelda Fitzgerald grew up
There is a memorial in Montgomery called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice that I was dying to see, but since it was outdoors, we decided to postpone until the following day in the hope we wouldn't have to visit in the rain, considering we were already dripping wet. We headed back to our Airbnb to relax and dry off a little.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Airbnb. I know that's a polarizing opinion, and I’m very aware of their shortcomings, but I can often find a better location for cheaper than a hotel, and I like having a little more space than you get in a hotel room. I also pore over reviews before I make a choice, so I've used Airbnb extensively with excellent results. However, our Airbnb in Montgomery was the first time I was completely led astray by positive reviews. Put plainly, our rental was not nice, despite the reviews saying it was. The setup was bizarre, the bathroom was painfully small, it wasn't as clean as I would have expected it to be, and it smelled a little mildewy (and the rain probably didn't help). So naturally, this was the Airbnb where we spent the most time, due to the rain. Typical! But thankfully we were only there for one night.
The rain lessened to a drizzle around dinnertime, so we went to Martin's, a local institution that served the "meat and three," as in meat and three sides, of traditional Southern cooking. We both had fried chicken and we also had cheese grits, cherry Jello, collard greens, cornbread, and rounded out the meal with butterscotch pie. It was absolutely to die for.
We got lucky and the sun came out the following morning, so we went downtown to explore near the riverfront, as the Alabama River goes right through downtown Montgomery.
The Wright Brothers started the first civilian aviation school in the US in Montgomery in 1910 (now it's Maxwell Air Force Base). This Wright Flyer replica is in Wright Brothers Park, right on the banks of the river.
Hank Williams memorial in downtown Montgomery
We then went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is "a memorial acknowledging the victims of racial terror lynchings," according to their website. I had seen interviews about the memorial on 60 Minutes and was incredibly moved by their coverage, let alone seeing it in person. I think the photos speak for themselves.
Jars of earth collected from known lynching sites. Since families weren't allowed to bury their lynched loved ones, this is the closest thing they have to a cemetery.
Memorial to enslaved people, with the lynching memorial up on the hill behind
Each of these represents a county where lynchings took place, with the names of all known victims listed on the front (or anonymous where the names have been lost to history). There are more than 800 of them altogether.
It's hard to share the scale in photos. There are just so many of them; it's overwhelming.
The coverage of this memorial on 60 Minutes is what inspired me to plan this trip through the Deep South, and it surpassed my expectations. If you find yourself in the area, I can't recommend highly enough how much I think you should visit. Additionally, this memorial was created by the Equal Justice Initiative, whose founder/executive director is Bryan Stevenson. Bryan's work was immortalized by the movie Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, but the movie—while excellent—only scratches the surface of all the incredible work Bryan and his team are doing regarding criminal justice reform. You can learn more (or donate if you feel so inclined!) here.
We then continued on our road trip, passing through Selma and Monroeville, AL on our way down to Mobile. For dinner that night, we ate incredible seafood right on the water--and our Airbnb for the evening was very nice, and completely met my expectations!
Monument to Congressman John Lewis, one of the peaceful protestors at the march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights, who were beaten and attacked by police on what became known as Bloody Sunday.
Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the protestors were attacked. I really, really hope they rename it the John Lewis Bridge, and soon.
Monroe County Courthouse in Monroeville, AL, home of author Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird).
If you think this looks familiar, the set designer from the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird visited this courthouse and created a near-replica for the movie
View from our dinner spot in Mobile
In the morning, we got beignets for breakfast (which we thought would be a quick stop and it absolutely wasn't) and hustled to join a tour that we'd signed up for, but we were still late. Thankfully the tour operator was nice enough to wait for us, since it was only us and one other couple. He took us on a driving tour of downtown Mobile, which has some of the prettiest old homes I've ever seen.
Beautiful homes in downtown Mobile. I just love the Spanish moss on the trees so much!
Mobile's Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception
We did a little more sightseeing on foot and some souvenir shopping before we stopped at Callaghan's Irish Pub for "the best burger in Mobile," according to our tour guide. Writing this blog post six months later, I don't remember the burger at all, so that makes me think it was mediocre, but who am I to complain about a burger?
We had planned to spend the whole day at the beach at Dauphin Island, but the weather was a little chilly for a beach day, so we ended up only going for a few hours late in the afternoon, but the time we spent there was very nice. We had a restaurant picked out for dinner that was in between the beach and our Airbnb, but the restaurant was sold out of a everything we wanted to eat because of a supply shortage. We ended up cobbling together a takeout dinner from two different places and ate in our Airbnb, so it all worked out and we had a relaxing evening.
Beach at Dauphin Island
On Saturday morning, we crossed the Mississippi state line and had lunch in Laurel, MS, setting of HGTV's Home Town. Julia is a huge fan, and we got to visit both Erin and Ben's stores, explore downtown, and eat at The5000 food truck, which Julia tells me is on the show all the time. On our way out of town, we drove through the neighborhood where Ben and Erin primarily do their renovation work, and several of the houses they've updated jumped out at us.
Erin Napier's store in Laurel, MS
We recognized this house that they renovated for one of the show's producers (and this photo was taken from the car, just so no one thinks we were barging in on strangers!)
We got back in the car and continued on to Jackson, MS to visit the Mississippi Civil Rights museum, which was absolutely riveting and I wish we had more time to explore. The museum is marketed as focusing on when Mississippi was "ground zero" for the Civil Rights Movement, and I was struck by how often events in Mississippi led to national action. Two examples of the many I noticed were the not-guilty conviction of Emmett Till's murderers in September 1955 inspiring people to start the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December 1955, and the violence and bloodshed of the Freedom Summer in June 1964, directly before the signing of the Civil Rights Act in July. We visited on a Saturday and there were only about 10 other people in the museum. I was really disappointed that so few people were there, even on a weekend, because it was truly fascinating history.
We did a little sightseeing on our own, visiting the Mississippi State Capitol, the Governor's Mansion, and Medgar Evers' house, a well-known civil rights activist who was assassinated in Jackson in 1963. We had plans to go out for barbecue that night, but the restaurant we planned on visiting closed early because the following day was Easter, so we ended up cobbling together a takeout dinner from two different places and eating in our Airbnb for the second night in a row. C'est la vie, I suppose!
Mississippi State Capitol
Medgar Evers house
Mississippi governor's mansion
The following day was Easter Sunday, so we went out for brunch in the morning and then visited the Vicksburg National Military Park, where a civil war battle was fought that you could argue turned the tide of the war in the Union's favor. It's also the final resting place of 17,000 Union soldiers, making it the largest Union cemetery in the country. I'm sure you can tell we're history buffs, so we would've enjoyed visiting anyway, but the landscape and the overlooks of the Mississippi river were also stunning.
Entrance to the military park
Illinois Memorial, dedicated to soldiers lost in battle from the state of Illinois, and the Shirley House, the only remaining wartime structure in the park. There's an area marked off for "Grant's headquarters" on the park map, so I thought there would be something to see there, but apparently General Grant had a cabin that was deconstructed during the battle because they needed the wood, and he stayed in a tent after that, so there’s nothing to see of his actual “headquarters.”
Overlooking the Mississippi River
We got back in the car and drove through the Mississippi Delta to reach our final destination of the day, which was Little Rock, AR. I expected the Delta to be swampy and wild, like it is down near New Orleans, but the part of the Delta we saw was actually very bleak, untended farmland with small, neglected homes dotted throughout. Hearing that it's one of the poorest areas in the country and seeing it are very different things.
We got to Little Rock late in the day, and since it was Easter Sunday and we knew nothing touristy would be open, we did our own little driving tour of the downtown area. We visited Little Rock Central High School, where the Little Rock Nine braved racism and worse to integrate the school in 1957, as well as the Arkansas State Capitol and the Clinton Presidential Library (of which I have no photos, as it was closed regardless of Easter because of Covid).
Arkansas State Capitol
Little Rock Central High School
Monument to the Little Rock Nine
We went to a farm-to-table place for dinner where we both hated our food, and ended up going to Sonic afterwards before continuing on to a hotel near the airport, so we were 0 for 3 for dinner for the last few days. To add insult to injury, I got really sick when we got back to our hotel, which we both thought was food poisoning. Julia was leaving in the morning, so it was quite a high note on which to end our trip together.
In the morning, we got up early so I could drive Julia to the Little Rock airport for her flight back to Washington, D.C. We had taken the road trip in my car, and I had no reason to rush home because I was in between jobs, so I was driving from Little Rock to Scranton on my own—over several days, of course. I went back to the hotel and slept for a few hours, then I tried eating a dry bagel. When it stayed down, I figured that was a good sign, and hit the road to Nashville, which was about a five-hour drive. Thankfully, I'd been to Nashville before, because I still wasn't really feeling up to a ton of sightseeing, so I just hung out in my Airbnb and watched Miracle, the hockey movie. A rousing good time in Nashville, clearly!
In the morning, I got up early and drove to Louisville, KY to visit both the Louisville Slugger Museum and the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs. The Louisville Slugger Museum tour was really interesting, especially to learn that they make customized bats for major league players who ask for them, even going so far as to let them choose the wood for the bats if they so desire. And I was like a kid in a candy store at Churchill Downs, because as a weird horse girl growing up, I had read so many books about the Kentucky Derby, and my family watches (and bets on it) every year.
Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory
Bat Vault, full of bats of all different shapes and sizes
Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby is held every year
Apparently this is where Queen Elizabeth II watched the race when she visited. Not a bad view, if you ask me!
Because my stomach was feeling better and everything I'd eaten that morning and the day before stayed down, I decided to eat normally for lunch. I tried a local delicacy called "pork cakes" at a barbecue restaurant, which are shredded pork formed into cakes and covered in a sorghum barbecue sauce. Sorghum, which is a type of molasses, is widely used only in Kentucky, and I love to try any local flavor. Unfortunately, my bad luck with food continued, and I found the pork cakes to be so salty that they were almost inedible. I only ate one of them and some mac and cheese I got on the side before I hit the road again, as I was spending the night in Indianapolis, 90 minutes away.
In the morning, I drove around downtown Indianapolis and briefly visited the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, the home where he lived before and after his presidency.
Benjamin Harrison's house before and after he was president
Indiana State Capitol
Lucky me, I had woken up in the middle of the night and got sick again, so I was thinking that I should probably visit an urgent care just to be safe (because naturally I WebMD'd myself and found out that some severe versions of food poisoning might require antibiotics, and my stomach clearly still wasn't right), but I had a type of insurance that was only accepted in Pennsylvania. I was headed for Pittsburgh that day anyway, so I put an urgent care into the GPS that was just across the Pennsylvania border and set off. Oh, the joys of healthcare in the US.
I didn't hit any traffic on the 4 hour drive to the urgent care, but then of course had to wait more than an hour to get seen, only for a doctor to speak to me for literally about 90 seconds, no exaggeration, and tell me it must be a virus, that I'd be fine in another day or two, and send me on my way. Very glad I made the effort to go there, as I'm sure you can imagine. I continued on to my friend Maria's house, which she had recently purchased and I was very excited to see. I was planning on staying with her that night but after the doctor told me I had a virus—and I'm more sensitive these days to the idea of getting people sick than I ever have been before—I didn't want to risk it, so I stayed in a hotel instead.
I had initially been planning on going home from Pittsburgh, since I was finally back in Pennsylvania, but my college roommate Colleen invited me to her birthday party over the weekend, so it made more sense to drive back to Julia's house in northern Virginia and stay with her for a couple days before the party on Saturday (and in the meantime, my stomach finally settled and the virus went away, thankfully). I finally made it home on Sunday, April 11, after 16 days of travel. All said and done, I got to visit a part of the country I'd never seen before, and I feel incredibly fortunate that I've been able to travel so much, this trip included!
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