Tuscaloosa, AL

After pretty much exhausting the tourism opportunities in Columbus, we decided to drive an hour east to Tuscaloosa, AL. On our way, we stopped at Lake Lowndes State Park and enjoyed a hike through the woods and around the lake. It definitely looks and feels like late autumn here, with crisp weather and new-fallen leaves covering the trails and crunching underfoot.

Tuscaloosa is home to the University of Alabama, perhaps the largest university we have ever seen and another institution that is the center of and seemingly inseparable from the surrounding community. Besides its enormous size, we were also struck by the near-uniformity of the architecture, with red brick and white columned buildings almost everywhere.

We had checked the schedule to make sure that it wasn’t a home-game Saturday for football-crazy ‘Bama—they were playing at rival Auburn—so getting around campus and finding a place to eat was easy. After lunch, we stopped by the local tourism office, visited a small farmers market and took a walk on the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk along the Black Warrior River. We had planned on visiting a couple of museums, but they were closed for the holiday weekend.