September 14-18, 2006 (2651)
The 76 counties collected in this trip are the color of kudzu.
A five-day trip through the states of Alabama and Mississippi (plus a corner of Georgia I hadn't bothered to stop in before) netted 76 new counties. The adventure provided plenty of opportunities to collect photographs for my classes (examples will be added soon) as well as visit some of my favorite restaurant chains plus a few new ones. Furthermore, I was pleased to finally have the opportunity to buy a 12-pack of Dr. Wham, which turned out to be far too few cans of this delicious beverage.
This trip was assembled rather quickly at the end of the summer, once I realized I would be able to fit one in. My initial plans for the year would have taken me to the Pacific Northwest, the only region of the lower 48 unfamiliar to me, but my wife and I determined that my car was no longer reliable enough to cross vast stretches of territory lacking services. My mother offered her car, but her schedule and mine never quite worked out. When my summer classes began in late July, it was beginning to look like no trip would happen this year. I prefer to travel in mid-summer to take advantage of long days, so given the long hours I'd expected to put in each day crossing Montana a few times, I doubted my ability to fit the trip in after classes ended the last week of August. Eventually, the need for a trip led me to restart my planning, and the idea to go south emerged. My mom's car was available for a few days, so I worked out the details, researched the areas to be traversed, and finally set out just days before fall quarter commenced.
My route took me through Gadsden, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Meridian, Jackson, Greenwood, Starkville, Columbus, and Tupelo, with stops in already-seen Chattanooga and Nashville coming and going. Traffic was light, the weather was perfect (no rain until the last day), the people were nice enough, and the roads--especially in Mississippi--were in great shape. Mississippi seems to be rebuilding every road in the state into a four-lane highway. The benefits are significant, especially in hurricane-prone areas, since they greatly reduce travel times and handle much more traffic. During non-emergency situations, though, the roads are generally empty except for logging trucks.
Highlights included blues radio, the smell of fresh cut pine, decorated catfish statues in Belzoni, Miss., a few oddball water towers to amuse my kids, and cotton fields that looked like fresh snow. The only minor disappointment was my inability to find an open Catfish One restaurant.
Even though this review is short (for now), the trip was convincingly worthwhile and valuable, and I returned fully recharged and ready for my four classes.