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Our Trip to the South, Part 1

Several years ago my husband and I decided we would take a trip to the South for our 25th anniversary.  This was the year (see this post) and we held ourselves to that despite the challenges of leaving all the kids, especially our youngest with her medical needs.  We asked our oldest son and his wife to take care of everyone while we were gone and they valiantly agreed.

We flew to Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, April 29th.  We arrived in the early afternoon and decided to go visit the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  It wasn't my favorite gardens that I've been to but still enjoyable.  One thing they specialize in is sculptures made out of plants.  They also have a really nice orchid house that we enjoyed.  Another thing I loved was how few people were there.  Rain was predicted but thankfully it held off until after we left.  The weather for our whole trip was actually great--not too hot, not too cold, and not too rainy.

 

These are all pitcher plants which eat insects

We spent the night near Birmingham, Alabama, and the next morning we visited the LDS temple nearby.  It's a very small temple but beautiful and we enjoyed it.  My brother-in-law is from this area so he recommended a few sites in Birmingham.  The first was the 16th Street Baptist Church where some bombings took place in 1963 in the middle of the civil rights movement.  The second was "Vulcan" which is a giant metal statue on the tallest hill in the area.


The 16th Street Baptist Church

We took lots of selfies on this trip because it was hard to find people who could take pictures for us.

Across the street from the church is a park.  This is a statue of the four girls who were killed in the bombing. 

Next we had lunch with my brother-in-law's mother, Arcola, at his favorite place to eat:  "Bob Sykes' Barbecue".  The food was good and Arcola was thrilled to see us.  It happened to be the day of my brother-in-law's birthday so we called him up and sang him "Happy Birthday" while we were having lunch.  I should mention that my brother-in-law lives in the Dallas area now so we couldn't see him in person.  I'm really glad we called her.


That night we drove to Slidell, Louisiana, which is a suburb of New Orleans.  The following morning we took a swamp tour of the "Honey Island Swamp" and that was pretty fun.  We saw alligators, feral pigs, some birds, and lots of turtles sunning themselves.  Afterwards we had lunch at a local place and ate fried catfish and fried shrimp.

I really enjoyed seeing the native wildlife--look for the heron in this picture.


It's hard to see but the feral pig is right in the middle of the picture--these animals are really a public nuisance in Louisiana because they're digging up the new levees.

That afternoon we started driving east towards Florida with a short stop in Mississippi at Biloxi Beach. 

 
 
Our main goal for the trip, besides spending time with each other, was to visit all the Southern states we had never been to before.  For people into stats like us, this is important.  We visited six states on this trip.

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