Is this called the Deep South?

Birmingham, Alabama

Who knew Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee were this large?  Yesterday I  finished book #1 and have almost finished # 2.  The bus has a system for playing movies and the group has watched Lincoln, some Robin Williams comedy whose name I didn't catch (didn't watch it) and The King's Speech, which some of the ladies around me pronounced boring. We drove all day- 8:30am-9:30 pm with breaks and we're stiff and gripey. At least some folks in the back of the bus are, but that's another story for another day.

Lunch stop was in Tuscaloosa, AL in an area with several restaurants from which to choose.  We picked Ryans which is a Golden Corral like place with lots of choices and lots of veggies.  Must be consistently good food, we saw police cars parked there.

We visited the Vulcan Park and Museum in Birmingham.  The "Largest Cast Iron Statue in the World" is situated there overlooking the city from a very high pedestal.  The origin of the LCIS in the World was for the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis-  It is a rendition of the Roman God of the working man (the forge and steel)- in charge of smelting ores from the earth.  The 56-foot tall statue depicts the Roman god Vulcan, god of the fire and forge. There was a small display of native ores beside the tower, which had an elevator so the visitor could go up to the observation deck to see Birmingham from a high vantage point.  When the displays were dismantled from the World's Fair, the statue was brought to Alabama.  It has been refurbished recently, since Vulcan's concrete "bones" were deteriorating.  The grounds were a very pretty park-like area surrounded with shrubbery and flowering trees.

While we were there, the rain, predicted by our bus driver, arrived.  It was refreshing and made the aroma of the trees and their flowers even stronger.

We stopped for supper at Cracker Barrel (one of our meals paid for by the tour), didn't realize there were soo many choices.  We looked around after our meal, saw lots of cute things that we don't need and then drove 2 more hours to our hotel in Knoxville.

Saturday's adventure is the Winston Link Museum (photography collection) in Roanoke, VA