Monday 1st February 2010 - Sweet Home Alabama

           It's a beautiful day, and I'm off south on 55 to Lynchburg, where the Jack Daniels Factory is, and which, therefore, indirectly produces the flavour for a lot of Scotch.  Then It's down 50 to Fayetteville, and straight south on 231 to Alabama.  And, almost immediately, this strange thing happens, where the majority of license plates change to Alabama.  Here they like to adorn their license plates with song titles, and, for the last couple of years, they have used a 1970s song, "Sweet Home Alabama".

           As we reach Huntsville, a huge Saturn 5 Rocket rears up in front of us.  Huntsville is the home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and boasts what looks like, in passing, a spectacular space museum.  As we pass, there is a shuttle, although I couldn't read its name, and quite a few other rockets standing about.  Then Dulcie steers us onto the interstate system, and, since it's such a beautiful day, I let her have her way.

          Southern Tenessee and Northern Alabama are not exactly flat, but they are certainly 'lowlands'.  On the other side of Huntsville, We get our first glimpse of the Tennessee River.  Having turned it into a hydro-electric resource, it's really a series of long thin lakes here.

          The snow, even on the north side of gravel mounds, has vanished, if it was ever here.  When we get to Birmingham, the temperature has climbed to nearly 60 (15).  We're now on the same latitude as Casablanca, so let's hope we've finally left the snow behind.

 

          Later that night, I find a bar in walking distance which carries a fine selection of local brews on draft.  Americans insist on calling these "Micro-brews" to distinguish them from the megalithic InBev, which owns most of the standard "domestic" brews.  But few of them are small in any sense Brits would understand.