First Trip to Montgomery and Tuskegee

Can I just say that I am super excited to be living in Alabama?  There are so many interesting things to do around here.  My little notebook of places I want to visit is filled with notes.  In fact, it's almost overwhelming to try to pick which places I want to visit first. 

I gave Brandon about 5 different options of places I wanted to visit over Memorial Day Weekend.  They were the Wetupka Impact Crater, Monroeville (which is basically Maycomb from To Kill a Mockingbird), Tuskegee, Montgomery, or Providence Canyon which is over the boarder in Georgia.  We ended up picking Montgomery because it was the closest and seemed to be a good place to see a lot of things.  

The drive to Montgomery was nice and only took about 90 minutes.  When we got to the city we headed into the downtown and followed the signs to the Visitor Center.  Our highway map of Alabama had a terrible map of downtown Montgomery so getting a better map was one of our top priorities         

The Visitor Center is located in the historic train station which has an old train shed behind it.  Hardly any of these train sheds exist anymore so that was really cool to see 

Derrick wasn't too sure about getting out of the car until a train went by.  Then he gleefully got out of the car to see the train go by.  ( He looks grumpy in this picture, but he was actually really happy.)

 We got a better map in the Visitor Center.  Then we went out back to check out an old street car that was on display there.

 It was close to lunch time so we decided to grab our picnic supplies out of the car and to take them down to the riverwalk area and find a place to eat.  The train tracks separated us from the riverbank.  There was a really cool bridge that stretched across the tracks.  So of course we had to go check that out

A train went over the tracks while we were on the bridge.  Derrick was really happy about that.  

 Everyone liked crossing the bridge.

 It was nice to be able to look out over everything from the top.  Sometimes I feel a little unsettled because all the trees make it hard to see very far.

 The elevator on the other side of the bridge wasn't working so we had to walk down the stairs.  Then we walked on a large boardwalk/ bridge.

 We found a nice shaded picnic table and had our lunch.  The weather was perfect.  It wasn't too muggy and there was a nice breeze blowing. Since we planned to visit some important Civil Rights locations we tried to explain segregation to the kids.

The kids were good and ate their sandwiches and other "real food" before we pulled out the junk food. You can see Veronica very much enjoyed her chocolate pudding.

 There was a splash pad that we could have gone to, but we didn't want to go sight seeing with a bunch of soggy kids.  There also was a strip of sand that Charlotte and Lydia had a lot of fun playing on.

Derrick picked up a couple rocks and waited patently until we were done eating.  Then we walked down to the water so he could throw them into the river.  After he did that we all went onto the stage of the outdoor amphitheater.  Veronica charmed some women when she climbed up the stairs all by herself  They said, "she is so precious."  Veronica then started yelling and roaring.  

We'd seen just about all we could see on the riverfront so we decided to head back to the car  This time we went under a tunnel to get around the rail road tracks.

Mongomery is the capitol of Alabama so we wanted to see the Capitol Building.  But first we drove by Wright Park so we could see a replica of the Wright Flier.  The Wright Brothers established the first civilian flight school in Montgomery so this airplane was put up in their honor.  The kids recognized the plane from the second Night at the Museum movie

We saw a few interesting thing while we drove through downtown, but probably the most interesting place was the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.  This is THE church where Martin Luther King Jr Organized the Montgomery Bus Boycotts in 1955.  We could have taken a tour of the church, but they cost more than I wanted to pay.

 Parking is free on the weekends in Montgomery so we parked outside the church and then walked up to the capitol.  We were surprised by how deserted the streets were.  Apparently Montgomery isn't most people's idea of a great place to spend Memorial Day Weekend.

This is the same route that the Selma to Montgomery March took in 1965.  You can't really see it in this picture, but the crosswalk pattern in front of the church is actually foot prints.

We had to walk around to the back of the building to get in the visitor entrance.  One side of the Capitol had a monument with the flag from every state.

 And a replica of the liberty bell.

Veronica did great walking around.  She is super independent.  She hates riding in strollers, being carried, and can be pretty annoyed if you try to hold her hand.

We were hoping to just do a quick self-guided tour of the building, but the capitol doesn't allow self guided tours on weekends.  We'd missed the beginning of the 1:00 tour, but the guards let us catch up in the middle of the tour.  It's probably good we only got the second half of the tour because our kids weren't too well behaved.  Veronica resented needing to stay in one place, and Derrick didn't like the echo-y hallways.  The people around us probably weren't too happy that we'd joined the tour, but I liked it.  I was dealing with Derrick so I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I did take this one.  Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, laid in state between these two pillars.

 This building was actually the Capitol Building of the Confederate States during the Civil War.  That's pretty cool.

 After the tour we decided to go back to the car.  The kids were all super hot and we all were feeling a little dehydrated.  Most of them ended up crying for all or part of the walk back to the car.  Brandon and I joked that one day our kids are going to learn about the Civil Rights Movement in school and they'll come home and ask us if we know about it.  We'll say, "of course we know about it, we took you kids to all those places and you cried at all of them."

 I need to mention that aside from freaking out in the echo-y hallways, Derrick did GREAT on this trip.  I took him to the doctor this week to start the process of getting his delays and sensory issues evaluated.  The doctor said some things that I didn't really want to hear - and apparently Derrick didn't want to hear them either because he started making improvements almost right away.  He learned a least five new words, had a "conversation" with Veronica, started making sound effects while playing with toy helicopters, and started answering our questions with either "no" or "yeah."  And then to top all that off he wore shoes the whole time we were in Montgomery. Derrick hasn't worn shoes for longer than 5 minutes in the past three months so wearing shoes was a really big deal.

 The kids were all in desperate  need of a nap so we decided to let them sleep while we drove home.  But then when we got on the freeway Brandon and I decided that we didn't want to go home yet.  It was only 2:30 and we still wanted to do some exploring.  So we decided to drive to Tuskegee.  There are two major things to see in Tuskegee.  One is the National Institute that is the location of one of the first colleges for black people.  The other thing to see is the Tuskegee Airfield where black pilots showed that they were just as competent as their white counterparts.

We picked the airfield, but I want to see the college stuff one day.  There wasn't a lot of shade, it was in the middle of the afternoon, and we all were already showing signs of dehydration, but we still got out to explore the area.  

The second Night at the Museum has a scene with some Tuskegee Airmen so this was another thing that our kids kind of knew about.  They were sort of excited to see the place where they trained. We had to take a long walk down a hill to get to the hanger.  If I'd known how long that walk would be I probably wouldn't have got out of the car.

 But once we got into the hanger things were better.  Derrick was really happy to see the airplane.  He calls them "ah-pins."

There was also a play airplane for the kids.  

 There was some sort of  fly-in going on over at the current airport.  Brandon used to work at the Logan Airport and they would have fly-ins that were open to the general public  So he ran over there to see if we could participate.  It was just about over, but the people in charge said our kids could play on the water slide until they took it down.  So we took the kids over there.  Being able to jump into a pool of water certainly made our kids feel better.

Brandon drove the car over to us so we didn't have to hike back up the hill. Then we drove back to Fort Rucker.  By the way, this is what pretty much all the roads look like in Alabama.  Nothing but trees.  Its very pretty.

I really liked seeing all these important historical places  These are places that I never imagined I would actually see.  It's so cool to be living near where all this history happened  I can't wait to see even more of it.