As shown in the picture above, the Davis Bayou visitor center had been severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. A temporary visitor center had been set up, but it was closed due to President Ford's funeral. We had expected this, and I had hoped to get here on New Years Day, but we didn't make it. After leaving Ocean Springs, we turned northeast and drove through Alabama to Montgomery, where we stopped for the day. There were a lot more evergreen trees in southern Mississippi and Alabama than in southern Louisiana, although crossing over the Mobile river was similar to what we saw driving from Lafayette to New Orleans.
This morning we
headed east out of Montgomery to the city of Tuskegee, Alabama, site of
two National Historic Sites. The first one we visited was the Tuskegee
Institute, a university started by Booker T Washington after the civil
war to allow black men to get an education. Unfortunately, their Jr
Ranger program had been suspended while it was being revamped, so we
looked around the George Washington Carver Museum and then moved on.
The second site was the Tuskegee Airmen NHS, which was established to
honor the black pilots who were trained there and flew during WWII.
Like the Tuskegee Institute, the Airmen site did not have a Jr Ranger
program. It currently is housed in temporary trailers while a permanent
visitor center is being built. They also plan to build a hanger to
hold WWII planes like those flown by the Tuskegee Airmen. It should be a
nice place to visit in a few years, but for now it's only worth about a
half hour visit. We watched the video there and then headed north.
The warm and sunny weather we had had for the last few days was gone,
replaced by overcast skies and occasional winds.
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