After over a month with dad in Shreveport we started January with an escape to the east trying to get far enough away we would not be tempted to run back for another daily crisis. Tough balancing act but we were trying to help him while actually having a retirement ourselves. By the time we got to Alabama I was definitely coming down with a rather severe cold/flu and we found a place in Montgomery to crash for a month.
We mostly stayed in the Montgomery area and as part of exploring the origins of the the Civil Rights Movement took a short trip to Selma which was the primary hot bed igniting the voting rights campaign and initiated the whole desegragation issue. A major industrial center in the Civil War it has since declined to the poorest city in Alabama with high violent crime and over 80% black population which in the 1960s had no representation in any city or county government posts. They sparked a revolution that was well past time.
In 2009 we had a great visit in the Mobile Bay area in January trying to stay in the warmer areas during the winter. Later in June we stayed overnight in Tuscaloosa exploring an alternate route from Shreveport, Louisiana back to Columbus, Ohio.
Our first sojourn in Alabama was a quick shot directly across the state to take a seminar at Auburn University covered in this other page. As I get to later years there will be a lot more including lengthy stays in Montgomery and Mobile.