Musings about Leaving Alabama

Our camp site in Dothan, Alabama, was at a Passport America park--A-OK Campground. Passport America is an organization that provides half-price camping at membership campgrounds. Because we are traveling on a budget, we stay at lots of these Passport America campgrounds and we highly recommend it. They usually are not fancy, but we've enjoyed getting to know many of the owners. A-OK is three miles south of town, on a hill that has been recently converted into an RV park. There is a little pond on the acreage, as well as two donkeys patrolling the area.

They love attention, and followed us around, hoping for a handout of carrots or apples.

Around Easter we saw a facebook story that pointed out that the donkey is the only animal that has a cross on its back. It is also the animal that Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem before his crucifixion. This picture of our new donkey friends shows that cross very clearly.

The picture also shows Denisa's white hair shining in the light of the setting sun, so it's a little hard to see it clearly. But she's glad to report that her latest Alabama hair cut was a success.

We have lived in Alabama for over a month, and have enjoyed watching spring unfold. We entered the state at the northwest corner, and stayed in 6 different campgrounds as we headed out of its southeast corner. Covered in forest and countless rivers and creeks, the landscape is much different than western Oklahoma.

We have found the people to be very friendly, and we loved that they use the word "ya'll" even in their text messages. But we've noticed a few idiosyncrasies that we just have to mention.

One difference has to be the number of turn-around opportunities on some four lane roads. We found while driving through a rural area that there were paved turning areas between the divided lanes every quarter mile. In the picture below, there are three visible. We're not sure who needs to make so many u-turns and why.

The sad thing that we noticed with most of the smaller highways we traveled was a large amount of trash. We have never seen so much garbage in bar ditches as we have experienced in Alabama. Not as noticeable along the interstate, but most of our campgrounds have been along these smaller trashier roads. No pictures, because we don't like taking ugly pictures.

We were glad to be traveling in a state that the Pew Research Center ranks as the most religious state in the country. We actually felt that influence as we traveled through Alabama. What we think is interesting, is the number of churches--especially Baptist churches. Traveling down a single road outside our rural campground in central Alabama, we could count six different Baptist churches within 5 and a half miles from the entry of our park. In order to differentiate them from each other, they have to get creative with their names--adding a street name, or the words "Primitive" or "Missionary" before the words "Baptist Church."

With six to choose from so close, we decided to attend the church nearest to the park, assuming they were most used to getting camping visitors. We must say that Stone Tank Antioch Baptist Church was one of the friendliest we have ever attended. Mrs. Finch took us under her wing, helping us through a service that used no hymnal and had no bulletin to guide us. She even gave us her phone number and address so we could call the next time we were in town. She was disappointed that we were leaving the next day because she wanted to invite us to her home for a meal. We would also say that this was the best dressed congregation we have ever experienced. Most of the men were wearing black suits and ties, and the women looked even better. Did we also mention that we were the only white people there? It was the liveliest worship service we have ever experienced! It was great!

Our final observation on life in Alabama, has to highlight their boiled peanuts. We had never tried them before, but now we are used to seeing them everywhere. They are available at farmer's markets, in tents along the highway, in convenience stores, and even available in cans in grocery stores. Our first purchase was the best, and we kept buying more peanuts to try to find that yummy taste again. But we can now say that all peanuts are not made boiled equally.

So we really loved parts of our extended stay in the state of Alabama. But as always, we are looking forward to new states to come!