It was interesting to get here from Arkansas. You head east, keep going, right over the Mississippi River and through a tremendous amount of construction in Memphis Tn, but keep going and now add a little southern direction. And you run into the corner of Mississippi. Keep heading southeast until you get to Alabama. The road gets nicer and it gets a bit wetter, more swampy. But all of it was quite green and pretty and aside from Memphis, very rural.
There are some tiny towns in Alabama, and some decent sized ones. Then there is Huntsville which is a real city. Very early on you see this monstrous rocket poking up into the sky. It is a Saturn V and it is at the US Space and Rocket Center- our primary reason for coming into Alabama! It is quite large at 360 feet, which is higher than anything else here. We passed it and finally got to Monte Santa State Park after 10 hours of driving. And a really windy, steep road to get to the top of the hill! It is pretty nice and sort of nuts because there is a gate to get into the park, which is sort of in the middle of a neighborhood and over a hilltop, and you also need a code to get into the actual campground. I think we are the only Ca plate here and the only other ones I’ve seen besides Alabama are from Texas, Illinois and Georgia. Definitely a state park. But the sites are nice, wide and level and they have showers and laundry machines in the bathroom. And electricity. Works for us.
We went to the US Space and Rocket Center first thing Saturday morning. It was fairly busy, and we always forget to try and avoid the weekends. But this couldn’t be helped. Here we are. It was very cool especially since neither of us really knew this was the area where the rockets were built and tested. We have been to White Sands, NM where most of the nuclear and some rocket testing happened, but this is where the vast majority of the testing occurred. All the major players were here – JPL, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed etc. There was a cool display on the first computers being used to get to the moon – designed because the engineers could not count on those first astronauts being capable of manually adjusting things as they went through all the shaking and G forces of liftoff. So something else had to be able to do those things. The other thing that was sort of a “duh” moment was that it was relatively easy to get men to space and even the moon, but landing the craft and then being able to leave the moon to come back was truly difficult! And there was a lot of emphasis on the Artemis mission to go back to the moon.
The other absolutely adorable thing we saw were so many kids and some adults wearing space outfits. So many kids with them on. They were sold in the gift shop and these kids had come before. They also had the Spark center with a lot of STEM activities for the kids. And a playground for “ the release of excess energy!” Too cute. The center was quite large as it also is the biggest space camp and hundred of kids come through there every summer. I wish they had adult space camp!
After lunch we went to the Huntsville Botanical gardens. It was a bit early in the spring, but the trees were all brilliant green with their new leaves, and some were blooming nicely. We got extra steps because somehow we took a wrong turn and went away from the gardens into a remote corner. Oh well! The buildings were quite elaborate and stately. And there was a wedding just starting with at least 10 attendants for each gender! 5 flower girls!
It became a really long day when we got back to the campground and realized there was a planetarium here. And the weekly talk was tonight. So quick showers and dinner and off we went.
Our last day we went on a hike just around the state park, and then went grocery shopping etc. It was a decent hike and we found this cute, rather large Japanese Garden right along the trail. Also a disc golf course!
So we had a pretty good time here in Huntsville- see no real reason to return but it was fun. Very friendly people with adorable accents. Off to Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains next!