On the Road at the Speed of Mike S01E13 - Alabama

Our adventure in Alabama starts in the state capital, Montgomery. The capital grounds features the capital building and it's surrounding statues and memorials, some of which are to the states confederate and civil rights history with the Confedrate Memorial Monument, a statue of Jefferson Davis who was inaugurated as the rebel president on the capital steps and a plaque to Martin Luther King who led the Selma to Montgomery March which ended on those same steps. The city sin't too big and has a minor league baseball team, "The Biscuits". There are several other confederate and civil rights places of interest throughout the city like the winter house, a church where MLK preached, the bus Rosa Parks made history in. Up on the city heights is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Part is a museum and the other is an art memorial to racial injustice in America, focusing on slavery, lynching and segregation. It's defining characteristic are 805 hanging metal boxes representing every county where a lynching was documented.

I actually drove down to Florida after this, but for the sake of keeping the videos more oriented by state than consecutive order of the trip, I added a portion where I crossed from Pensacola to Mobile. The first stop was Elberta, Alabama. This area is road trip worthy because a millionaire decided to create a foam replica of stone henge called Bamahenge, random dinosaurs in the forest, a lady in the lake, and several other oddities on his property and it's all free for the public to visit.

The last stop was the USS Alabama. This WW2 battleship was purchased by it's namesake state before it was scrapped like so many others in the US navy's historic arsenal. The grounds not only includes the ship, but dozens of tanks and aircraft used during WW2, Vietnam, The Cold War and Iraq. Parking is $4 and if you want to actually walk onto the ship it costs $15.