Chasing Cars: Houston/Talladega (and the Deep South/Texas)

[UKCraig]

I must go find that thread! = Gerbil Convention to the Salt Flats.

Anyway, apologies again for the length, but:

Day 8

Before I left home I took the advice and suggestions of the RTA forum users, read books and spent hours online putting together an itinerary for this trip. It’s not something that I ever wanted to, I really liked the idea of ’making it up on the ground’, but there were just so many ideas that I really had to put them down in some sort of order. Long after coming up with a definitive itinerary I kept adding more ideas and soon it was looking like I was flying home five or six days early!

Amazingly though I seem to have arrived at day number eight a whole day ahead of schedule - I never would have believed it possible - but looking at my map and guide book didn’t really present any obvious destinations to fill the spare day, so I decided to cool the pace and chill out for the day.

The perfect way to start a chilled day would be wake from a solid eight hours sleep, then unzip the door of your tent and realise the only thing you can see is the sun glinting off a pretty lake. And that is exactly how I started the day - so much better than the view yesterday morning. Leaving the door open, I lay there and admired the view for a bit, played some of the past week back in my mind, admired the view, fell asleep again and then finally got up. After a hectic week it really was fantastic to just slow right down like that.

I didn’t leave the campground until dinner time and, when I did, I turned out of the entrance and straight onto a five mile long gravel track. Back home in Europe, where I drive a small front wheel drive car, we don’t have gravel roads. Fullstop. Or period as you say. So, being in a Mustang, you can probably imagine my smile… Dukes Of Hazzard? The only difference was they weren’t in a Mustang!

First stop of the day was nearby Tupelo to visit the house where Elvis was born and brought up as a kid. Not much to say really apart from it being a whole lot smaller and less impressive than the other house which I visited yesterday. The gift shop was pretty impressive though, at least as big as the one at Graceland but, hey, it’s all about giving the fans what they want, right? I’ll do what Tony Stewart should have done last Saturday night and respond with a ‘no comment’ answer!

I still had several hours to fill and kept a keen eye out for interesting looking destinations along the highway. After passing into Alabama I found that destination in a sign reading ‘Natural Bridge Park’ which intrigued me enough to make a 30-mile detour. It cost $2.50 and, although it was a long way (I’m not talking miles) from Arches NP, it was real nice to get out of the car and stretch the old legs. Talking of old legs, the old girl manning the gift shop (no Elvis goodies, surprisingly) was totally mad and was rambling incoherently about Oxford when I left. I presume she was talking about Oxford in England, which is just south of Birmingham, kinda spooky as Birmingham (in Alabama) was my next stop.

Not really sure where to head I did a couple of laps of the city trying to find an open wi-fi connection but, alas, they must have been preaching to the locals about the importance of securing their networks and no access was to be found. What I did find though was Kelly Ingram Park, which was another key location in the Civil Rights movement, and now home to a number of thought provoking sculptures. Normally I run a mile when I’m approached by those guys who come up to you, give you a bit of information, then hold out their hand for ‘payment’ but I happily handed over a couple of spare bucks to some guy who came up and gave me a really fascinating tour of the park and pointed out several other landmarks that I should see including the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

And that brings me to here, the Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Birmingham, for that is the first hotel I spotted when I left town. Before leaving home I found that every hotel in a fifty mile radius of Talladega was fully booked, so I thought it wise to stop in Birmingham before heading onwards to Talladega tomorrow morning. The price came as something of a shock, after the Super 8, but it’s a real pleasure to be treated well and to have a clean and pleasant room. So far I’ve not managed to spot any of those strange stains, there don’t appear to be any bugs living in the bed and no one has stolen the TV remote control. I guess there’s truth in the saying ‘you get what you pay for’ and, after years of being a tight arse when it comes to hotels, I am starting to realise why people spend fortunes on them!