DAY 4: Thursday Oct 23th We woke up late, just north of Atlanta, Georgia, and finally got ourselves going at around 10:30 or so. We headed south through Atlanta, which was a huge, spread-out city without any real center. There were lots of interesting buildings here though, with it being a relatively new town they had all sorts of neat styles of buildings including some mighty nice art deco styles. We took a break south of the city at a McDonalds. I found it very odd that all the workers were black - but all of the customers were white. Why didn't the black locals want to eat here? Why didn't the white locals want to work here? Very strange. OK, south we went into Alabama. I noticed here that while we got nice Welcome Signs as we got into each state, the signs got much bigger and friendlier as we headed south! I was now at the point of crying out in glee "Look, Alabama Welcomes Us!!" when we got to them, and they would have big, friendly letters and pictures of flowers and such. The states also had big welcome centers right over the border with all sorts of brochures and hotel listings and more. Very welcoming.

OK, back to the landscape. We were on smaller roads now and in with the houses, instead of the fields and forests we'd had up until now. The houses were primarily brick and small, with little porches on front with chairs for sitting in. The cemeteries we past didn't have grassy tops on the coffins like we have up north - instead they had the rectangle marked out and covered with stones or gravel.

We saw a LOT of people sitting out on their front porches, waving friendily at us as we passed. Even people far back off the road in their little run-down houses would wave as we went by. It was very nice! There were pine trees around, which we thought odd, pine trees seem like a northern / cold weather tree.

It was getting awfully hot by now, in the upper 80s and 90s, so we stopped for some ice cream at the McDonalds. The roads here were wide and grass-strip-separated, VERY much like the ones at the end of Easy Rider. There were all sorts of run down and abandoned houses along the road.

We crossed into Florida, the sun was still shining. There were stands of trees looking Evergladsey to me, but soon the landscape turned into more of a beach-resort feel to it with neon signs and little shops. We hit the ocean and turned west, driving along it. The sun was setting now as we ambled along the road which ran near the water. You could glimpse the water occasionally behind houses or buildings. We went past several military bases, white sands and dunes. The sand was VERY white here! There were several long bridges connecting the varous parts together. We stopped by a seafood restaurant to get some photos of the gorgeous waters, sands and environment.

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Note that Lisa is starting to already look at bit chunky from her carb-rich diet :)

We played in the white sands a bit and stayed to watch the sun set. The sunset was simply gorgeous! I was CONVINCED there would be a "green flash" when the sun hit the horizon but I mistimed my photos and didn't get it. If you are interested, Here are the Pensacola, Florida Sunset Photos :)

MPG video of the white sands of Pensacola, FL
MPG video of the sunset over the ocean at Pensacola

OK, now we rode through Pensacola and headed inland towards Mobile, Alabama. We saw the battleship stationed there and a long, cool tunnel, but no restaurants. We kept going, singing songs like "Alabama Getwaway" and "Sweet Home Alabama" under a gorgeous, starry sky.

We tooled along and finally stopped at 8pm near the end of Alabama in Mobile. We were lured in by signs for a popular local restaurant - "Dick Russell's". It was a country-style restaurant with lots of well-worn wood and cattle horns and such.

The waitress was quite friendly and knew all about low carb to help Bob out. I ordered the seafood gumbo with rice, "Cajun style", and some crawfish. The gumbo was great, rich and thick. My crawfish came while Bob was outside calling for hotels. The fish was fried with some round fried things next to them and large french fries. I asked the waitress what the round things were and she smiled and said they were "hush puppies". I must have looked pretty blank, because she continued, "They're round balls of corn meal fried up in batter." She looked concerned and added, "Do you know what corn bread is?" I smiled and said yes, and decided to eat them with ketchup.

I had a Coors Light with this meal, 5g of carbs and fresh tasting. Bob had beef briscuit and turnip greens which he liked a lot. It turns out that Bob was not Welcomed by the local Alabama hotels - they wouldn't honor the coupon price from the coupon book. So we decided to head on to Biloxi and found a GREAT hotel right across from the beach there! Woo-hoo!

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