THE 2021 KLEPPER ROAD
TRIP: ALABAMA,
For one reason or another, this trip to Alabama had been in the planning stages for several years. After the pandemic year, we were more than ready to go somewhere. By the time we pulled out of the driveway June 27th, we had a pretty good idea of our itinerary although we had not plotted everything out on the map. We knew we wanted to stay off the interstates and we wanted to eat as much barbecue as we could!
Armed with GPS, cell phones, map, printouts from the
computer, books on CD, a cooler, snacks, and tourist book from Alabama we
headed north to Valdosta and then west on Hwy 84. One of our rules is to avoid all interstate
highways as much as possible. Our aim is to see what is unique about each state, to soak in the countryside and small
towns, and to sample some of the good food that comes from local restaurants.
We have enjoyed the gulf shores of Alabama on other trips and we have
seen most of the sights in Birmingham, so these were not at the top of our list.
We labeled our first day: Peanuts and Boll Weevils. We crossed the Chattahoochee River, reset our watches to central time and headed toward Dothan, our first stop, through flat farmland and little settlements along the way. In Dothan we saw the restored historical section with brick walkways, colorful murals, and bright summer flowers. After despairing with the directions on the GPS, we employed google to find the visitor’s center and our first “peanut” which happened to be Peanut Elvis. After leaving Dothan which is blessed with urban sprawl and chains galore, we traveled through Daleville, a nice little town, and arrived in Enterprise where we headed to the center of the town for the Boll Weevil Statue.
Now the statue is in a busy intersection. There really isn’t an easy way to appreciate
its beauty other than driving by it from four different directions. The statue actually honors the insect which
basically destroyed the cotton industry in the south in the early twentieth
century, forcing the farmers to diversify their crops. Of course the farmers went through some tough
economic times while they were doing this.
Today with modern insecticides cotton farming still exists but it is not
as large as it was before the Boll Weevil’s infestation.
Our next destination was Big Daddy’s Barbecue, but, wouldn’t you know, it was closed on Monday. We discovered the old depot by the train tracks and saw more murals on buildings and a lot of old attractive places. We located Larry’s Real Pit Barbecue out by the highway circling Enterprise.
Since it was midafternoon, we did not have any trouble getting a table. I had ribs; Klep had a pulled pork sandwiches. The barbecue was good and so were the sides. We left happy, joined the rush hour traffic (we were near a military base) and called it a day, stopping in at a Publix for some more snacks before heading to our motel.
Day 2 was Small Towns, Hank Williams, and Famous
Authors. Light comes early in eastern
Alabama this time of the year. We were
on our way under a clear blue sky in time to make it to the Hank Williams
Boyhood Home Museum by opening time. On
the way we spent some time in Elba seeing the old Coffee County Jail and
They would sit under the house by the chimney during the winters and play the guitar. The house is full of memorabilia from his years of performing as well as some of the dishes he and first wife Aubrey used during their marriage. After we drove around the town to see the old buildings, we headed up to Kendall’s Barbecue for lunch. Their sign above their place advertises “Howling Good Taste”
and they lived up to their motto. It is a little building with a takeout window with no indoor seating, but the barbecue (I had a rib sandwich) was fall off the bone good. The coleslaw was good too. One of the fun things about this stop was the conversations with others who had driven up to get their food. One man had been a long haul trucker who has now retired who planned his stops to hit this place. When we were through eating at the picnic table, we discovered that the troopers whose car was parked in front had taken their food next door to eat in the convenience store which had tables indoors in air conditioning. Next time we will know!
The courtroom upstairs is just like the one in the movie. The set designer came to Monroeville as well as the actors before the film was made, but the movie was shot in Hollywood. Our guide, a retired copyreader, is a distant relative of Truman Capote and had many good stories to about him and Miss Lee. We hope someday to return when the play is being acted in the amphitheater outside the museum. The old Lee home was sold in the early fifties and torn down, but we saw many other stately old homes which were of the same period. At the site of the old Lee house, we enjoyed afternoon treats at Mel’s Dairy Dream which was recommended by the museum workers.
We took Hwy 84 to Grove Hill where we saw another historic
courthouse and beautiful old town and then got on Hwy 43 north to Demopolis, paralleling
the Mississippi line about twenty miles west of our route. We found our motel on Hwy 80 and called it a
day.
Day 3: The Bridge, Hank Williams, American Village, and Cousins. We headed east under a pale blue sky with banks of clouds before us. We passed a junk store loaded with old metal bedsteads outdoors, corn fields, fat cattle, old block silos, new shiny silos flat land, little old churches, old deserted buildings, an Alabama Catfish feed mill, Harvest Select catfish farms, and arrived at Selma where we crossed the river on the famous
Seeing workers heading in and getting in line was a good sign that we had found good food. We ordered and sat down to wait for our food. Klep got pulled pork and I ordered the chicken which was supposed to be one of their top draws. The room was full with many of the workers and others acquainted with each other. I listened to the talk and heard one man talk about the peaches that were the best ever. He said his mother had her stand open. That was good to hear. After we enjoyed lunch we started toward Birmingham again and passed one stand next to a peach orchard. We kept a watch out for another and pulled in. The fruit was large and beautiful and the trees it had come to was right around the stand a young man was working the front with an older lady in the back putting peaches in the baskets. I told them that I had heard that the peaches were good from men at the barbecue place. The woman asked if they were power workers and said it must have been her son! Later, we shared one of the large peaches and they were delicious.
We passed through Montevallo which was a beautiful town and
a few miles out of town we pulled into American Village which is a collection of
buildings similar to the colonial era.
The site has reenactments and educational programs and currently has
their Red, White, and Blue programs going.
Since it was midafternoon by this time, we walked through the veteran’s
area and the chapel and enjoyed a reenactment of a sergeant in General
Washington’s army loading and firing a musket. After this, we headed toward the more densely
populated area of Helena for our overnight with cousins.
Thursday morning, we headed out to Vulcan which is located close to Homewood. Molly and Coke took us to an Alabama fast food favorite of theirs, Jacks where we enjoyed a breakfast of biscuits and gravy with eggs. Unfortunately the only reasonable way to get to the Vulcan Park was by using the interstate.
Vulcan is a fifty ton statue to the glory days of Birmingham’s steel industry which towers over Birmingham in a beautifully landscaped park on Red Mountain overlooking the city. The views from the park of the city ware spectacular as was the derriere of Vulcan which could be enjoyed from much of Homewood and from the parking lot.
After Coke safely returned us to our car in Helena, we said
our goodbyes and headed east on county roads and state roads gradually working
our way to the area around Guntersville where we started enjoying the lake
views. The whole drive was scenic
including a lovely heard of charlis cattle,
old houses, mountains behind sweeping valleys, and then the lakes.
We arrived at our motel for the evening by late afternoon. A cousin on the Klepper side picked us up, gave us a little tour, and we joined his wife for a supper at Fifty Taters where we enjoyed stuffed potatoes that included barbecue. As usual, we spent a long time at our meals catching up, telling tales, and laughing a lot. The next morning, we followed Mel to our next tourist destination, the Unclaimed Baggage Store. We split up to do our shopping.
I got a map from one of the helpful young women at the front of the massive store. The help was extremely friendly and helpful. It was amazing the variety of items for sale. I concentrated on the ladies clothes and the costume jewelry. I had already decided I would spend no more than thirty dollars. I stayed within my budget, ended up with four necklaces, a dress, and a pair of denim capris which still had the store label in them. I spent the rest of my time talking to people at the chairs near the snack bar. Klep and Mel occasionally checked in as they continued their exploration in the electronics and the men’s sections.
Before noon we headed west on Alternate Hwy 72. A few miles out of Scottsboro, we pulled over
to check our notes and find our next barbecue restaurant. As we looked at the map, I heard a tap on my
window and looked up to see a red headed, bearded UPS driver standing
there. He was concerned that we were
either lost or were having car trouble.
We explained what we were doing and he got all excited and told us about
the time his daddy took him to Tuscaloosa for a Bama game and they ate at the
original Dreamland Barbecue. We talked
barbecue for a while and he recommended the original Big Bob Gibson Barbecue in
Decatur which was once ranked as having one of the top four barbecue dishes in
the entire country. It was on our
list. He gave us directions and we were
on our way.
When we pulled into the packed parking lot, we saw the first
sign that this was a good place with the stacks of wood and the smoke coming
out of the cooker. When we got inside,
the dining room was huge and within minutes we were at our table. The place was known for its white sauce and
for the chicken, so that is what I ordered.
Klep got another stuffed potato and he got the chicken too. The food
lived up to its hype. The sides were
good and you could tell that the mac and cheese was baked by the crust on the
top.
Full and happy, we returned to our car and headed west on 72 as the land flattened out and we returned to an area that was at one time plantation territory. We found the sign for the General Joe Wheeler house and pulled in for a visit. After the Civil War, General Wheeler who was still a young man, returned to Pond Spring, courted, and married a widow.
He built the home and this is where their family was raised. One of their daughters was a nurse during the Spanish American War and served with her father. Later she was also a nurse in World War I and served in France. We continued our drive through small towns, enjoying the old courthouse and historic churches and cemeteries. We hit Hwy 43 south of Muscle Shoals and headed north toward Florence which would be our home base for the next two nights.
After checking in, we broke our no franchise rule by running
over to the DQ which was next to the motel and getting blizzards for supper. Afterwards, we plotted out Saturday’s
itinerary and called it a night.
Saturday dawned bright and blue. We started by driving across the Wilson Dam, the first dam on the Tennessee River to come under the authority of the TVA. It was built in 1924 and became a historical landmark in 1966. It was impressive to drive over the actual dam and see the massive lake it created. This is one of nine dams on the Tennessee River.
We enjoyed spending some time in the park on the southern side of the lake and then drove on into Muscle Shoals for our visit to Muscle Shoals. Our destination was the FAME Studios where the renown Muscle Shoals sound made its way into the music world back in the sixties. To quote from the FAME website:
" FAME Recording Studios’ lush acoustics and unique musical legacy
have made it one of the most sought after recording studios in the world. It’s
the room where Aretha Franklin found her sound. It’s the room where Wilson
Pickett whaled on “Mustang Sally”. It’s where Clarence Carter has recorded for
five decades. It’s the room that continually produces chart-topping,
generation-defining music year after year after year, including the 2019 #1
Americana album Muscle Shoals – Small
Town Big Sound which included #1
Americana single, Grace Potter’s “I’d Rather Go Blind”
After the studio, we drove down to Tuscumbia to see a manmade waterfall at a little lake. It was lovely, but the leavings of dog walkers around the lake made walking a bit troublesome.
Our next stop was the birthplace and childhood home of Helen Keller. The house was built in 1820 by Helen’s grandparents and is described as being a “Virginia Cottage” type structure with four rooms downstairs divided by a hall and three rooms upstairs with a hall. The kitchen was in a building outback. The house was originally located on 640 acres. Helen was born on a cottage close to the house where her parents lived when they were first married. This is where Annie taught Helen the concept of language and the pump where the breakthrough took place is located between the main house and the cottage.
The house is furnished with original furniture, the grounds are lovely, and there is a steady stream of visitors from all over. In the evening, the play, The Miracle Worker, is put on next door in an amphitheater on Friday and Saturday nights this time of the year.
Lunch was
next on the itinerary and it was to be Brooks Barbecue back in Muscle
Shoals. We finally found a parking space
and discovered that there was no indoor service and no drive through window. We went to plan B and put the address for the
Rattlesnake Saloon in the GPS and headed toward the hills. We continued our journey for miles before
pulling into a large parking lot full of cars and motorcycles and a very, very
long line of people snaking around the lot from a stand with a sign for the
shuttle to the saloon-in a cave up the ridge. I looked at Klep,
he looked at me, and we decided no food was worth standing in that line in July
heat. I scrounged around in the car and
found a box with two apple fritters we had gotten at Publix the first day of
the trip and we headed off to find the Coon dog Cemetery.
When we hit
Highway 72 again, we knew something was wrong.
Our written down directions said the cemetery was 1.2 miles from 72, but
we had found no road. Later that
evening, we discovered that it should have been 12 miles and that my google directions
had been right. Ah, well, these things
happen. I went to the GPS, looked up
barbecue, and we decided on Bishop Hog House Barbecue because we liked the
sound of the name. The address was a Cherokee address.
He gave us some of his 3 N 1 barbecue sauce and told us to follow him back to the barbecue house where he showed us the two massive smokers where they could cook 1300 lbs on each cooker. They use hickory wood. Mr. Bishop sent Klep back to our car to get our ice chest and filled it up, gave us barbecue frozen, cole slaw in container, plates, forks, and a ziplock bag to keep the leftovers in. He told me to stop at the store and get some buns. After showing us some of his Alabama memorabilia, he gave us easy directions to the Natchez Trace, told us some history to be aware of, and bid us goodbye. What had been a frustration turned into an absolute charming encounter.
We made our way to the Trace, turned onto it, and headed back toward Florence enjoying the serenity of the surroundings and imagining it when it was the trail travelers took it from Tennessee to the Mississippi River. We got off at county road 8 to find the Wichahpi Commemorative Stone Wall.
The wall contains 8.5 million pounds of stone with no fill and no mortar. It is the largest memorial built in honor of a woman. Tom Hendrix spent more than 33 years building the wall to honor his grandmother who went to Oklahoma on the “Trail of Tears” and returned to her singing river walking alone as a teenager. It is a peaceful, simple and impressive creation. We were the only ones there and we stood under the massive trees in the cool of the late afternoon ad relished the beauty of it all and the spirit of the woman.
Later that evening, we
enjoyed our late, late lunch and agreed with Mr. L.O. that he made some fine
barbecue.
then to visit some of the little towns where our friend Judy spent some of her childhood years as a Baptist preacher’s daughter. We passed through Town Creek and much later in the day Hanceville. We drove over Wheeler Dam, built 1933-36, the second built on the Tennessee River. We next wound south to Natural Bridge Park where we walked from the visitor’s center to the longest natural bridge, 148 feet long made of sandstone, east of the Rockies. It was wonderfully cool the deep shade of the forest.
We left the park and headed east to Cullman where we had planned to eat at Johnny’s Barbecue, in business since 1956 and highly recommended. Unfortunately, they were not open on Sundays. In fact, we never found one open on Sunday which was also the fourth of July. We went to our next tourist stop, the Ava Maria Grotto which contains 125 small stone and cement structures and was built by a monk . It is a winding path through miniature villages and shrines which is fascinating. I was especially intrigued by the Italian area and the old Jerusalem buildings.
Afterwards, we picked up some shortbread cookies and raisin bread baked by the monks and hit the road looking for an orchard that was supposed to be open and was supposed to have peaches. It wasn’t but we had a scenic tour through some more of Alabama’s lovely countryside before we drove over the Easley covered bridge which has been in use since 1927.
We headed south toward Talladega
and called it a day.
Klep found another farm that was supposed to have peaches near Ulaldo. They did have some peaches. Another item was checked off our list. We also procured some fried fruit pies for emergencies. Our last major tourist stop was to be the tree that owns itself in Eufaula. Klep did not want to go through Auburn, so I plotted us a circuitous and interesting rural route south through more little towns and farmlands until we arrived in Eufaula and discovered that our barbecue restaurant for the day was closed on Monday. By this time, it was raining and the traffic was heavy. We were getting close to the infamous tree, but not getting our turn that we needed. We were also getting hungry, so we went out to the fast food strip on the east of town and pulled into Jack’s for a burger. Klep was not leaving
Eufaula without seeing the tree. We inched back through pouring rain and he made the turn, jumped out of the car, got the photo, and we headed toward home.
The navigator was instructed
to get us back to Hwy 84 without backtracking through Dothan. With only one little mistake in our
navigation, we did just that, entering Georgia at Fort Gaines. We pulled into home having logged 1796
miles. It was a good trip. We said hello to the cats, started the
laundry and checked the progress of Elsa.
