...with your skiiies so blue...

This is a paid endorsement.

I've passed through Alabama a bunch of times during my lifetime. My family always passed through Mobile on road trips to visit my mom's brother in Florida. As a kid I would move up front and bounce in my seat as we approached the tunnel there (we were driving under the ocean, people! Well, the Gulf, technically, but I was a kid. What did I know?). On a couple of occasions we stopped to explore the U.S.S. Alabama battleship before moving on. Mobile was, for us, the gateway to Florida, and once we passed that milestone, we breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that we were, finally, almost there.

Once, on a band trip to Orlando during my senior year of high school, our bus got a flat tire and we ended up stranded for several hours in a Super Food World parking lot in Montgomery. It was the middle of the night and the grocery store, being the only thing open, became mecca for our gaggle of wired, punchy and hungry teenagers. I remember coming down with a fairly severe cough on that trip and being grateful that I could go in and buy some cough medicine. Eventually they fixed our tire and we were on our way to the Sunshine State and theme parks and concert band contests, but those few hours in that parking lot in Alabama were a highlight of the trip.

I always mean to go back to Alabama some day and spend some quality time there. That's why I'm enjoying this informational site about the state, with information on schools and universities, real estate and home ownership, state parks and attractions, and even a helpful section on gardening tips. It's a reminder of what a pretty state Alabama is. Next time I find myself passing through, I'm going to make it a point to linger there for a while.