Past Decatur highway 72 becomes Interstate 565, a vast elevated monstrosity that has to be the legacy of some important Congressman. 565 starts as four lanes but rapidly grows to as many as twelve as it runs the seventeen miles from Decatur to Huntsville. The highway basically goes nowhere other than Huntsville, a place smaller than Des Moines. Even at rush hour 565 didn't seem terribly busy, and two months later I'm still pondering why they needed so many lanes. The car sounded noisy as I drove up 565. However, they had recently resurfaced the highway, so I couldn't really tell if the problem was with the road or with my car. It seemed to drive fine, so I just kept going.
At one time in the not too distant past Huntsville was a sleepy little market town for cotton plantations, probably not unlike Tuscumbia. Today, though, it's about as distant from the old South as Boston or New York. Modern Huntsville was built by and for the space program. Right after World War II, the military was looking for an out of the way place where they could safely test rockets and munitions. They found Huntsville and constructed the Redstone Arsenal south of town. NASA built its headquarters at the arsenal in the '50s, and the missiles that launched the Mercury astronauts into space were called Redstone rockets. NASA and associated military agencies are still by far the biggest employers in town, and the signs at the edge of town welcome you to "Rocket City, USA". Even the baseball team Brad plays for is called the Stars in honor of the space program. Huntsville's premier tourist attraction is the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the largest space museum outside the Smithsonian. It's hard to miss the rocket center when you drive into Huntsville on the interstate. Huntsville is a sprawling, low-rise city; its only real "skyline" comes from a collection of rockets that tower above the NASA parking lots at the west end of town.
As I exited for the rocket center, I could tell it was my car, not the highway, that had a problem. It sounded as if I had no muffler at all. Indeed, I was reminded of an old commercial jingle that continues to go through my head as I write this:
Shake, scrape, thunder, rattle, boom, boom, BOOM--
Don't worry, call the Car-X man.
I chugged and rattled along and made my way into the nearest visitors' lot at NASA, said a little prayer for making it there okay, and then decided I might as well see things before worrying about the car.
I had budgeted pretty much the whole afternoon to visit the rocket center, far more time than was really necessary. It's an interesting museum, but it's not really all that large. There's a lot more NASA-related stuff in Washington (where admission is free, as compared to the steep charges they have here), and most of the stuff they have here can also be seen in other NASA facilities such as those in Houston and Gulfport. I expected headquarters to be bigger and better, but it really wasn't all that special.
What would be fun to do here, if I had both the time and money, would be to go to Space Camp. The rocket center offers camps for both children and adults, which give ordinary mortals the opportunity to experience what it's like to be an astronaut. What they're really doing, of course, is getting double use out of the facilities they use to train astronauts, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that. For now, though, space camp will remain just a dream. Even a week-long camp charges fees equivalent to a full semester's college tuition.
When I finished doing the rocket center, I returned to my car. It started up fine, but again was noisy as all get out. I could also smell exhaust coming in through the vent, so I knew something was seriously wrong. Muffler-less cars really aren't that uncommon down South, though. While I felt incredibly conspicuous as I drove along, I suspect the only thing that stood out to the locals was my Yankee license plate.
Iowa plates would certainly stand out in Alabama, where virtually every license plate is local. There are a variety of styles of Alabama plates, offering drivers the opportunity to subsidize a variety of charitable causes (including public schools, of all things). It's the main plate design that's strangest of all, though. The plates are red, white, and blue, in a format similar to South Dakota plates. There top is littered with what seem to be shooting stars, and across the top are the words "STARS FELL ON". The new motto replaced the old "HEART OF DIXIE," which some people apparently thought was racist. I did a bit of research before writing this, and apparently "Stars Fell on Alabama" is the title of a Frank Sinatra song. For the life of me, though, I still don't know what it's supposed to mean. I even checked the lyrics on a website, and there it appears "stars falling" was a '40s euphemism for "making love" or at least passionate closeness (not unlike the expression "her kiss made me see fireworks"). That's an interesting literary device, but hardly what I'd expect on the license plates of a state where a judge posts the Ten Commandments in his courthouse. I'm going with the theory that they're just celebrating some big meteor shower.
The main north/south drag in Huntsville is called Memorial Parkway, and it's one of the strangest roads I've seen anywhere. For most of its length this incredibly busy highway is divided into two sections. The inner parkway is six lanes that are mostly elevated and limited access. About every half mile the right lane becomes "exit only" and abruptly heads down to the outer parkway, twin access roads with one-way traffic on each side of the main parkway and constant U-turns heading under the main road. Further south the parkway narrows to six total lanes, with businesses right along the street. There are frequent and badly-timed stoplights. The jammed-up traffic from the stoplight portion backs up onto the limited access portion, making the whole thing one big bottleneck.
I crawled about seven miles south, until I came to the Huntsville Econolodge. At check-in I asked the desk clerk if there was a muffler shop nearby. It wasn't Car-X I ended up going to, but the clerk did direct me to a Midas outlet a couple miles north on the parkway, right next to the stadium where Brad's team played. I dumped my luggage in Room 134 and quickly made my way back north amid a deafening roar.
I was expecting the worst when I pulled into Midas. First, it wouldn't have surprised me if they weren't able to even look at the car until tomorrow at he earliest. Then, since I know nothing about cars, I was certain they'd milk me for as much money as they could get. Midas pleasantly surprised me, and having had a positive experience at the Midas in Huntsville, I'd go to another of their locations if I should have a problem in the future. When I explained that I was from out of town, they went out of their way to make room for me in their schedule. Within half an hour they had the car in the garage, and in another fifteen minutes they had a diagnosis. It apparently wasn't the muffler at all, but rather the catalytic converter. The service manager said it appeared that something had hit the converter (I'm betting the joints on that weird bridge in Decatur) and cracked it. I had noticed "catalytic converter replacement" on their price list, given as "starting at $239", so I gritted my teeth and prepared to max out my credit card. The service manager explained, though, that they didn't have a catalytic converter for a Metro in stock, so they couldn't replace it. What he suggested instead was that they weld the existing converter. He assured me that the mend would get me home, and it would likely last for the life of the car. The cost was a pleasant surprise--just $30, tax included. Within another half hour I was on my way, with my wallet not even that much lighter.
* * * * *
I made my way back to the motel and rushed inside my room to use the bathroom. There I noticed a problem I hadn't seen when I just set my stuff down earlier. The tub was filled with dirty water, and the drain mechanism didn't seem to work. I rushed back to the office to explain the problem. They had changed shifts, and the new employee was significantly less pleasant than the old man who had checked me in. I managed to switch rooms, though, this time to 118. I moved all my stuff down to the new room, which was smaller, but clean and perfectly adequate.
I settled in and just relaxed in the air conditioning for about half an hour. Then I walked next door to a Shell station where I bought the local newspaper and a two-liter Pepsi in a very unusual bottle I could add to my collection. I relaxed some more and then headed off to the stadium.
* * * * *
Tonight's game was scheduled for 7pm. I had left the motel at 6:00, so I assumed I'd have plenty of time to explore the stadium before the start of the game. Imagine my surprise, then, when I walked in the stadium and found things already underway. It turned out that this was a double-header, with the first game the completion of a game that was suspended a month earlier. Apparently the Stars were already down by eight runs when the game was called for rain, after just one inning. They started at 6pm tonight so they could complete all nine innings of the suspended game and then play an abbreviated seven-inning version of the game that had been scheduled for tonight.
The first game had been started before Brad joined the team, and the manager chose to continue with the players who had started it. That meant Brad was in the dugout, just as he had been when I saw him in California. The game was dull, with neither team doing much of anything. In the bottom of the ninth, Brad was on deck as a pinch hitter with the Stars still down by eight runs. The batter ahead of him popped out to end the game, so Brad never did come to the plate.
Brad waved me down by the dugout after the game, and we chatted a while. He said he'd be playing leftfield in the second game. The Brewers were trying him out in the outfield, hoping that he might be able to adapt there which would allow both him and Prince Fielder to progress through the ranks without competing with each other. ...
Brad described the difference between High Desert and Huntsville as being like night and day. The High Desert Mavericks were one of the worst teams in baseball. They literally had the worst record of any minor league team this year, and they were threatening to break an all-time losing record. Huntsville, on the other hand, was contending for a pennant. (In fact, they'd go on to win the division championship and make it all the way to the final game of the Southern League World Series.) In Adelanto, Brad said, they came to work each day hoping they wouldn't lose; in Huntsville they expected to win. The whole atmosphere in the locker room was different, and he was obviously liking things much better here than in California.
The Huntsville team should be good. About three-fourths of minor leaguers never reach AA ball, and of those that do roughly half will make the big leagues some day. The Huntsville team is better than that, though. Milwaukee had pretty much stacked this team, placing most of their best prospects together. Almost all the Stars players stand a legitimate chance of making it to "the show", and down the road I'll be looking for names like Mike Jones, David Nolasco, Mike Adams, Corey Hart, J.J. Hardy, Dave Krynzel, Kade Johnson, Brandon Gemmoll, Chris Barnwell, and--of course--Brad Nelson.
Even though Brad was the Milwaukee system's player of the year last year, he was definitely at the bottom of that list this year in Huntsville. While he was very much an important part of the team, he was still recovering from the surgery and just hadn't been hitting that well. That was obviously frustrating to him, but he knew part of baseball was getting beyond slumps and looking at things from a long-term perspective. Looking at statistics, Brad's 2003 season was a disaster. Hopefully, though, he salvaged some good--like learning a new position--out of it, and he'll be back where he wants to be next year.
* * * * *
I asked Brad how the heat here compared with California. It was cooler, but far more humid here than in High Desert. Both places, though, it was usually pleasant baseball weather at night. (In fact, after a miserable day, this turned into a lovely evening.) Day games in both places were sheer hell, though. (He didn't use those exact words, but...)
We talked for about fifteen minutes before Brad had to leave to join his teammates. He assured me that the second game would be just seven innings and said he's be back to visit afterwards.
There was at least another half hour before the nightcap would begin, so I explored the stadium. Cavernous is probably the best word to describe Joe Davis Stadium. It dwarfs all the A-ball fields I'd been to, and it's easily bigger than AAA Sec Taylor in Des Moines. The place was actually built as a football stadium, and apparently they still play high school football here in the fall. Like all multi-purpose stadiums, that makes it very lop-sided for baseball. The right field wall is quite close in, while it seems like a mile to center or left. There's also far more foul area than at most ballparks. The radio announcer calls Joe Davis "where foul balls go to die", because so many fouls that would be in the stands at other parks are caught for outs here.
The stadium is truly enormous, far larger than it needs to be. The program says it seats over 10,000 people, but I'd guess less than one-tenth that number were in attendance today. (The "official" attendance was around 1500, but as in California, I suspect that's really the season ticket base.) According to the radio announcer on fireworks nights or big giveaways the biggest crowds are in the 8,000 range, and they feel they do well if they fill the lower deck--which would be 5,000.
* * * * *
They have fairly decent concessions at Joe Davis. The prices seemed a bit steep (particularly after being gouged for parking), but they had a nice variety of tasty food. Most enjoyable were cheesesteaks almost identical to what I had had in Philadelphia. They also had enormous beverage cups, so one drink would likely last you all through a game.
The ushers at Joe Davis are kind of snotty. In most minor league parks they don't really have ushers, and those that do are usually pretty friendly and casual--especially in places that never come close to selling out. Here, though, they didn't want you wandering into any section other than where your ticketed seat was. It made me wonder whether if they were a bit friendlier about things, they might draw a few more fans.
Game 2 started, and I was impressed when Brad got a hit early in the game and reached on an error in his next at bat. I can't speak for his skills in the outfield, because he literally didn't have any chances all night long. Not many balls left the infield, and those that did went straight to right. Brad would always move quickly toward where a ball was hit, but each time he'd stop as someone else fielded it.
While Brad got an early hit, his average would fall tonight as he came to bat and popped or lined out again and again and again. The nightcap was scheduled to go seven innings, but at the end of seven things were all tied up. They stayed tied through eight ... then nine ... then ten. The scoreboard only went to ten innings, so when they passed that mark, they cleared things off and started over. It was still tied through the tenth inning ... and the eleventh. Both teams scored in the twelfth, but the Stars ended up pulling off a win. By this point pretty much no one was left in the park but me and the players, but I could still say the crowd went wild.
Both Brad and I were exhausted after twenty full innings of baseball, so we really didn't talk much after the game. ... I made my way back to the Econolodge and collapsed in bed at about 12:30am. The day had been long and eventful, but mostly it had been good.
I had hoped to sleep in today, so needless to say I was up before 7:00. I munched a day-old Krispy Kreme doughnut, organized the luggage in my room, and then set off for the day. I had debated whether I should just stay in Huntsville because of the car problems I'd had yesterday, but in the end I figured if the Midas man said the fix would get me home, it ought to get me a few hundred more miles too.
I drove up the parkway in a glut of rush hour traffic, made more annoying by the rain. I exited onto 565 and headed eastward above downtown. Eventually the vast interstate narrowed to four lanes and switched its number back to US 72. The road was lined with shiny new signs announcing that all four lanes should stop for school buses. They'd announced at the game last night that today would be the first day of school in Huntsville (another incredibly early start), so I kept expecting to slam on the brakes as I sped along. While I saw several buses out this morning, fortunately none of them stopped on the expressway.
Huntsville lies right at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. It's relatively flat west of here, but at the east edge of town the highway climbs and climbs and climbs. The car did fine all through the climb, so whatever they fixed yesterday must have worked. Once I finally got to the top of the grade, the highway followed what in the West they'd call a canyon, with the Tennessee River at the bottom. It's really beautiful country here--rugged tree-covered mountains separated by grassy valleys with the fast-rushing blue and white river never far away.
Even with a four-lane highway, this area looks very remote. Most of it is unsettled, and what homes there are mostly are buried back in the woods. The occasional businesses are old and weather-beaten. Many are barely more than shacks. The most common business on this stretch is "Vulcan", a regional chain of ancient service stations based in Birmingham. I did the Star Trek salute and thought of Mr. Spock as I passed each one.
The rain kept coming and going as I drove along. Sometimes it just dripped lightly, while other times it poured to the point that I could barely see the road. Fortunately traffic was light, so I didn't have any serious problems. I kept wondering, though, how this might affect my chances of seeing a ballgame tonight.
In about an hour and a half I was back in Tennessee, and I soon re-joined Interstate 24. I headed southward, nipping a corner of Georgia before heading back north into the outskirts of Chattanooga. I took Exit 176 and followed Lookout Mountain Parkway to my first destination of the day.
You can't drive in the South without seeing signs for Ruby Falls. This is sort of the Wall Drug of Dixie, a tourist attraction that would likely be unknown if not for the power of advertising. Most of the signs just say "RUBY FALLS". A few describe its merits, and some also suggest you see its twin attraction, Rock City. I remember seeing Ruby Falls signs on the Gulf Coast a decade ago, and in Tennessee and Alabama the billboards come literally every couple of miles. I had read about Ruby Falls before making this trip, and I decided to check out what all the hype was about.
While it is without question a tourist trap, I'm glad I made the trip to Ruby Falls. What it basically amounts to is an enormous privately-owned cave. The falls themselves are underground, deep within the cave. You take an elevator down from the top of Lookout Mountain and then hike about half a mile underground to get to them. The cave is really quite interesting, and the falls themselves (apparently the largest known underground falls on earth) are worth the trip.
I must say, though, that I'd have preferred it if Ruby Falls were a National Park Service property, rather than being privately owned. The first problem is that the place is over-priced. It costs $13.95 just to do the cave tour, and they have various packages for the surrounding attractions that go up and up from there. Then there's the fact that they try to photograph all their visitors and sell them their pictures before they leave. They did that when we took the boat to Alcatraz in San Francisco, and I thought it was stupid there too. Here I flatly refused to do it, which prompted a bit of a scuffle with the photographer but no serious problems. Adding to the overly commercial atmosphere is that there are gift shops everywhere. You buy your tickets in one gift shop, then you go through another gift shop to get to the photographer. Past there is yet another gift shop before you hit the elevator to go to the cave. Once you finish the tour, there's two more gift shops before you're back in the parking lot. ... Most of the stuff was weird junk that didn't even have anything to do with Ruby Falls or caves in general-things like Hummel figurines, miniature wicker furniture, and crude jokes printed on T-shirts.
I was part of a group of about forty visitors. Groups that size leave every fifteen minutes, so it's not hard to figure out just how much money goes through their till in a day. Our guide was an elderly man named Chuck who apparently gives four tours a day. We passed several other tours en route, and it was clear that Chuck was a far superior guide to most of the rest. The majority were college boys who did little more than read the signs or say things like "this is a stalagmite". Chuck gave us a good history of the place, he described all the points of interest in detail, and he had a "good ol' boy" banter that just made the visit more interesting. He also did a good job of making everybody feel like part of the group without making anyone feel stupid--a very hard thing to pull off.
The group was really quite diverse. I did a double-take at the man right in front of me, who looked exactly like an adult student I had taught at Iowa Lakes a few years back. It wasn't that person (this guy and his wife were from Miami), but it surely could have been his twin. Behind me was a family who lived in the city of Chicago very near the Clarion hotel I have often stayed at. Like me, neither the parents nor the kids could believe that school was in session in the South. Chicago would have their earliest start date ever this year, exactly the same time we were at Garrigan--but two full weeks after they did down here.
Others who stood out in group included a group of girls from Long Island in Moslem dress, a Hispanic family from Texas, a couple from Seattle who were basically making out all through the tour, and a Black man from Chattanooga who said that "after all these years I just had to see what the place was".
The cave reminded me of one of the first computer games ever written, the Adventure Construction Set. Somewhere in my apartment I probably still have old six-inch floppy disks for the Apple II version of that game. The game was a text adventure. As a player, you explored an underground world. You read through novel-like descriptions, and at the end of each you were presented with a series of decisions to make. You wrote your own adventure through the decisions you made. Different decisions would take you to new rooms, each of which had different rewards or risks. I'm not sure I ever did make it to the final goal of the game (I've never really had much patience for computer games of any sort), but I enjoyed going through the virtual cave and reading descriptions of all the wonderful underground rooms. The Ruby Falls cave was like that. The underground trail is well-enough marked that you could probably make your way back if you were separated from the group, but it still provides a feeling of mystery and exploring the unknown. It gives the illusion that something new and wonderful is unfolding around every corner. I'd never been in a cave of any significant size before, and it was fascinating to see all the different rock formations.
The falls themselves will certainly not challenge Niagara, but they are quite interesting. It's a very tall, but narrow and gentle waterfall that showers well away from the cliff above and into a shallow pool. If it were outdoors, you'd expect to see a Polynesian beauty bathing there in a movie. I expected from the name that there might be red rock around it casting some eerie color upon the water. In fact the name comes from the wife of the discoverer (whom he later divorced, but who got the tourist attraction in the settlement). The falls themselves are clear water, and the surrounding rock is probably gray limestone. They train multicolored lights on the falls (another annoying aspect of having a privately-owned tourist attraction), but even the lights tend toward cool colors rather than red.
It was cool and humid underground, though not so clammy as I might have expected. When I re-surfaced an hour and a half later, it was absolutely pouring outside. It was the sort of storm that separates the north from the south. We got that kind of rain when I was growing up in Mt. Pleasant, but I don't think I've ever seen it north of Iowa City. I fought the rain back down Lookout Mountain and had a frightening drive along the interstate as trucks sped by literally blinding me with sheets of water. Somehow I made it back to highway 72, where I was grateful to have less traffic so I could drive the speed I wanted.
I went south into Alabama just a few miles and then turned off on a county road. Along the main highway I saw only forest, but the side road went mostly through farmland. I passed horse pastures and tobacco fields and neat white houses and country churches that looked like the belonged in New England. I traveled about six miles on a series of county roads before reaching my next destination, Russell Cave National Monument.
Russell Cave is a National Park Service property, and it has to be just about the least visited unit in the system. It was right at noon, but I was the very first person to sign the guest book today. The female ranger was far too helpful. She gave me an armful of brochures, insisted I see at least one film (she'd have preferred I'd see two), and even offered to give a personalized tour of the tiny museum. She couldn't seem to believe that I had actually come here from Iowa and didn't seem to find it a whole lot more believable that I had come up from Huntsville.
The purpose of the national monument is basically to preserve a historic site. For millennia group after group of pre-Columbian peoples lived in the cave. Among them were those who later moved west and became the mound builders. The cave continued to be used by both Indians and white people up until the time of the Civil War. It was then abandoned, and in the early 20th Century most of its archeological treasures were plundered-explaining why there's really almost nothing in the museum.
It struck me as a bit odd that in a monument named after a cave you couldn't tour the cave at all. There's a walkway built of recycled plastic (incredibly slippery in rainy weather) that goes out to the entrance to the cave. At the entrance they have a sort of diorama set up with life-size figures of Indian people going about domestic life. It would be fairly easy to walk past the figures and into the cave itself, but you're not supposed to. That's probably because the only employee here appears to be that ranger. She's pretty much tied to the visitors' center (after all, they might have a second visitor at some point), so she can't supervise visitors inside the cave.
In addition to the milk jug walkway, they have a real trail that goes to the top of the mountain above the cave. I, of course, followed the trail. It fascinated me that while it was pouring rain, the dense forest cover kept me perfectly dry the whole time. It was really just a walk through the woods, and at the top all I saw was the same farming valley I had driven through to get here. It made a fun little hike, though.
I returned to highway 72 and headed west about half an hour to Scottsboro, the only real town between Huntsville and Chattanooga. Scottsboro is a pleasant little town, but I was here to see its offbeat claim to fame: the Unclaimed Baggage Center. This is exactly what its name implies. A company here buys up unclaimed baggage that airline passengers have written off as lost. They open the bags, sort out all the treasures, and unload it all in what amounts to an enormous upscale second-hand store. The vast clearance center is set up like a big department store, though the relative size of the departments is different than it would be at Sears or Marshall Field's. There's not a lot of furniture or appliances, for instance (that anyone brought such things on a plane amazed me), but the collection of CDs is exhaustive. There's also aisle after aisle of small electronics: cameras, laptop computers, game boys, and every kind of electric shaver imaginable. The jewelry department is extensive, and so is the book department. By contrast, there's not a lot of office supplies or domestics. They even have strange departments you wouldn't expect, like a year-round collection of Christmas supplies and a sporting goods section heavy on surfing gear.
Then there's the clothes. If someone could wear it, they probably have it here. They're especially well stocked with high- and low-end clothes, precisely what different types of people wear when they travel. There's rack on rack of Hawaiian shirts and shelf after shelf of blue jeans. The women's department has gowns a star could wear to the Oscars, and menswear has a full aisle of tuxedos. Most of the clothes, though, are business wear. The one item I bought fit this category. I picked up a classic blue blazer identical to what Garrigan's athletes wear on dress-up days. It's silk and wool, and it probably cost well over $100 new. I paid $25 for an item that looked like it had barely been worn. That's about the discount on most of the stuff they sell here. Of course, from the store's point of view, almost every dollar is pure profit.
In an obscure corner of the store, they have a little museum with some of the stranger and more valuable items the Unclaimed Baggage Center has come into possession of over the years. They include original paintings, a full set of elegant china, a complete uncut sheet of hundred dollar bills, a wide variety of collectible weapons, and an enormous antique chair ("throne" would probably be a better description) that I can't imagine fitting into the hold of a plane.
I bought gas at a Citgo station across from the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Then I made my way back to the highway, where I stopped for a mid-afternoon lunch. I chose Krystal, the Chattanooga-based chain whose miniature burgers resemble the White Castles found in the north. I had three cheese krystals, some cheese fries, and a huge iced tea ("unsweet", of course--I can't stand sugar in tea).
It was clear and bright when I left Scottsboro, and it remained sunny all the way back to Huntsville. That left me some hope that the game scheduled for tonight might actually happen after all. It would really come down to whether they had a tarp on the field and just how good their drainage system was. I figured in the South they'd be used to dealing with showers, so I made plans assuming the game would go on--but prudently decided to call the stadium before I set off.
After relaxing a bit at the motel and jotting down the notes I used to write this travelogue, I called Joe Davis Stadium. While I had held out hope, it wasn't really a surprise that the game was a rain-out, even though there would be clear blue skies at game time. Apparently they'd made the decision to cancel at 9am; those morning storms had flooded the field to the point that it couldn't be rescued.
* * * * *
... I ... watched the Yankees and Rangers on TV, a reasonable substitute for the game I was missing.
Today I purposely got up early. I showered and had another day-old Krispy Kreme and was on my way before 6:45am. I headed north on the parkway and turned off on US 431. This [runs] past an enormous hospital complex and then made my way up a long, twisty hill lined with elegant homes.
I got out of Huntsville fairly quickly, but I can't say I ever really got out of town. That's because highway 431 is basically one big suburban strip all the way across the state. I chose this route because on a map it goes diagonally, as opposed to interstates 65 and 20, which make the legs of a right triangle. I'm pretty sure the interstates would have been shorter, though, since every time I got up to speed on 431, I'd have to slam on the brakes for a stop light or slow down for yet another town.
The most scenic thing I passed this morning was Guntersville Lake, one of the TVA projects on the Tennessee River. Guntersville and Albertville, on either side of the picturesque lake, are resort towns. Boaz also seems heavily touristed. It's biggest attraction looks to be an enormous outlet mall. Atalla and Gadsden are just run-on cities.
Eventually I made it to Anniston, a city I've since heard and read quite a bit about. Anniston has been described as the most toxic city in the United States. For decades they manufactured the highly-toxic chemicals called PCBs here. It's now illegal to produce or distribute PCBs, so they stored all the excess in a landfill that created an artificial mountain west of town. Apparently the chemicals have been leaching out of the landfill, but the company that built it is now out of business--meaning there's no money for clean-up. It's a lot like Love Canal was back in the '70s or Times Beach in the '80s.
(CONTINUED)
The background music on this page is the Sister Act arrangement of "Hail Holy Queen".