Life On The Road — Entry #3
Our final week in Texas was spent at the campground for the most part. We made a couple trips into Greenville, but nothing truly exciting. After such an exciting and busy weekend, we needed time to recover and rest. Plus, the upcoming weekend was our travel weekend and it was a two day drive.
Ever since moving into the RV, we have set a rule for ourselves to drive a max of 6 hours in one day. Especially with the sun going down so much earlier in the day, we don’t want to pull in anywhere while there is no sun, so anything more than 5–6 hours will have two days dedicated to it.
Our drive from Point, Texas to Arley, Alabama was roughly 9 and a half hours according to Google. Memphis, Tennessee was a mediocrely middle location for us to stop and explore. We arrived in Memphis later than we had anticipated, but still got the chance to drive around the city some and have some excellent Memphis food. Memphis is a city with fantastic music and history in music.
We weren’t actually staying in Memphis that night, it was about half an hour south in Mississippi at a Harvest Host. For those who don’t know, Harvest Host is a yearly subscription that gives RV-ers the option to stay in some unique places like, vineyards, breweries, golf courses, and so on.
The following morning, we left Mississippi for Alabama at a somewhat decent time (at least by our standards). The majority of our drive was on interstate, which is preferable for us, but the final 40 minutes or so was highway in the mountains (yeah, Alabama has mountains apparently).
The campground is on the massive Smith Lake that’s right next to Bankhead National Forest. Recently, the campground added or renovated a portion of the campground. During the hot summers, we usually try to find sites with plenty of tree coverage, but during this time of year, we don’t mind an open sky site. The bathhouse and laundry room in this section of campground is brand new, which really helps.
The day we pulled in, we dropped our trailer and got the dogs set up, then headed for Birmingham. With the limited daylight and Bailey working a full-time schedule, we have to use all time on the weekends that we have for exploration. We were definitely surprised by Birmingham, it’s a really cool city. We drove to the heart, which was mostly flat and then all of a sudden the houses just seemingly started going straight up. There’s really not much gradual climbing to this part of the city, it just goes directly into mountains.
Up on the mountains here we saw a huge statue. Of course, we had to go check it out. It was only 6:30pm or so but it was already so dark. We figured that the park around this statue would be closed since it was a Sunday, but it was open. There’s the option to go to up on the statue and just look down on the city of Birmingham. It was such an incredible experience.
Tuesday was the day we were most excited for…So we already knew that this trip through the south would give us the opportunity to see our favorite NHL team (the Winnipeg Jets) play twice, but we found out we actually had a chance for a third. Tuesday was that option, if we were willing to drive three hours north to Nashville, Tennessee (one of our favorite cities). Of course we were willing, it’s not only a chance to watch an NHL game but a chance to watch our favorite team. Sadly, the Jets lost, but they played one hell of a game.
The drive back from Nashville gave us our second experience with the famous southern gas station, Buc-ee’s. This place is truly remarkable. Thursday evening was spent heading about 30 minutes into a nearby town of Cullman to get groceries. Otherwise, this week was also spent at the campground.
Our campground is pretty well in the middle of Birmingham and Huntsville, just off to the west a bit. We had plans to head into Birmingham on Saturday, so Friday night was spent checking out Huntsville. The trick with some of these adventures is doing our best to not spend money. Writing this out, it seems like we just spend money left and right, but we don’t, we can’t. So we really just drove around Huntsville attempting to get ideas of things we can do during a day we come back with daylight and more time.
Saturday was supposed to be a day almost entirely dedicated to Birmingham, but we struggled getting out of bed and on the road. By the time we got ourselves up and showered, it was dark. We still made the trip in to see a whole different part of the city. We originally wanted to get in to watch a semi-pro hockey game, but the tickets were sold out. The area the arena was in was beautiful though and we still needed to check something important off our list…eat some legit southern BBQ.
We loved this area of Birmingham so much that we decided to head back on Sunday. Most of the outdoor activities weren’t an option due to heavy rain all day, but we still had a great time. We stopped in some local shops and then grabbed a cheap bite to eat.
