Sweet Home Alabama

I'm not sure how long I am going to be able to keep up with the song titles for blog posts, but today we spent much of the drive in Alabama, so the song, Sweet Home Alabama, echoed on many of the number plates here seemed a good choice - more details here. The other choice was Bowie's Alabama Song but I'm no fan of that (though it might have been better as we left the state, as it encourages that!!)

Unlike yesterday when we left early we took it more gentle this morning. After a meal like last night's I think my system needed some digestion time, so I didn't wake up until 5.20. I then got up and made a coffee before posting on the blog and naming and loading 250 odd photos to Flickr - over a 100 from the World of Coca-Cola, with those and the free soft drinks I reckon we got a lot more than our money's worth in that visit.

We went down to breakfast at 8.15, again they had a good selection of food at the hotel. It being Friday it was a non-meat breakfast for me, but this was not a problem. I had scrambled eggs, two boiled eggs and a bagel with cream cheese. Drew, not being a catholic, was not affected by this rule - so had 3 sausage patties and scrambled eggs followed by an apple danish and a raspberry danish. 

We left Atlanta at 9.20 and by 10.20 had arrived in Alabama (well it was in fact 9.20, as the Georgia/Alabama state line is also the line between Eastern Standard Time and Central Standard time - another reason we decided to leave later than usual today). Alabama is a state we have both visited before, though last time (2002) we stopped in Montgomery and travelled further south across the beautiful Dauphin Island. This time we travelled south of the Appalachians and past some large rivers and lakes through the north of the state past Birmingham, the largest of Alabama's cities.  The US-78 then took us through the Appalachian foothills and through the forests that grow there.

We stopped at a petrol station at Jasper, AL and had a snack. Then it was on to the Mississippi state line. We arrived at the Comfort Inn, Tupelo at 1.55 in the middle of a raging thunder storm. My brother in law had been in touch to tell us about the flooding in this state, thankfully for us, but not for the people affected, that is a long way south from here. Though for about 20 minutes we had torrential rain, the storm passed over and the roads quickly dried.