Northern AL: Sweet Home Alabama

Alabama isn’t really our sweet HOME, but after a spin through Northern AL, we just might like it to be! Not typically known for tourist attractions, we nevertheless scoped out its really unusual, charming places! 

Tuscumbia

SEVEN SPRINGS LODGE & THE RATTLESNAKE SALOON

We stayed at a most-unusual RV campground, located on a 3,000-acre horse ranch, called Seven Springs Lodge.  That’s right, we backed the RV up to a corral housing a braying donkey, and called it HOME. Besides RV hookups, they also have a few cabins for rent, or you can even stay in one of two converted grain silos! Long run by generations of the Foster family since they bought it for $0.25/acre in 1916, the current manager is 78-year-old Danny, who quickly recognized a kindred spirit in Philip, and within hours they were doing shots together.   Boys will be boys!

The ranch has hookups for over 100 RVs, and that’s because they have so many events here: rodeos, rallys, 4×4 gatherings, horse-people-events, rodeos and more – just two weeks prior, this place was teeming with 2,000 people and 4,000 horses.  It’s the kind of place where signs warn you not to tie your horse to the playground fence.

Seeing as we don’t have horses, how did we end up here?  We came for the Rattlesnake Saloon, a restaurant built under a rock ledge, which was for the former hog pen on this ranch. The name gave us pause, but it was named as such because upon early excavation, a momma rattler and her 12 babies were found in a nest here. 

Run by Danny’s son and stationed down a long, steep hill, patrons take a “saloon taxi” down to it. Only open Thurs-Sun, and despite its remote location, it attracts a large following for miles around Northern Alabama, with people streaming in constantly.

Trust me, it’s not for the food, which was mediocre bar food at best, or even for the beverages, which was a short list of ordinary beers. It’s for the unique setting, which was fabulous, and the live (great!) music playing “under the light of a neon moon” (that’s a country song, y’all).

Only two residents live permanently on-site, and one of them is a fabulous woodcarver with a gallery here.

This was one of the more unusual places we have camped, and we loved every minute of it!

HELEN KELLER BIRTHPLACE

Having visited Elvis’ birthplace in MS, we thought it only fair to visit Helen Keller’s HOME and museum in AL.

“Ivy Green” was built in 1820 and since 1954, has been a shrine to the “miracle” that occurred in a blind and deaf seven-year-old girl’s life.

Watchers of the Patty Duke, Oscar-winning, oh-so-very-dramatic movie “Miracle Worker” will recognize many of the famous locations … the main house’s dining room, site of many gasp-inducing fights ….

the “bridal suite,” to which teacher Annie Sullivan insisted on removing the willful/spoiled/bratty child away from her indulgent parents …

and the backyard water pump where Helen finally “got it,” W – A – T – E – R is a word that means water. What we didn’t know prior to the house tour is that the miracle occured a mere month after Annie arrived — we thought it was years.

The property includes an old “whistle path” with a variety of gifts, statues, and fountains given to the Keller Shrine in her honor. During summer months, “The Miracle Worker” outdoor play is also performed on these grounds.

Fun fact, Patty Duke played Helen in the original Miracle Worker movie, and also played Annie in the later remake! She visited this home several times. Helen Keller went on to graduate from college, write multiple books in multiple languages, and generally astonish everyone with her accomplishments throughout her illustrious life.

Red Bay

TIFFIN RV FACTORY TOUR

Red Bay, Alabama, is legendary to RV’ers, because it’s the HOME of Tiffin Motorhomes.  The debate currently rages if Tiffin is as good as it used to be, since being bought by mega-conglomerate Thor Industries, but if/when we purchase our next/last RV, odds are good that it will be a Tiffin diesel pusher. “Many Adventures, One Dream,” indeed!

We joined a scheduled Tiffin factory tour and met Bob Tiffin.  The now-84 year old founder is still a spitfire, funny and warm, who loves to talk to customers … past, current or future.  Meeting Bob is kinda like a football fan bumping into Brock Purdy and having a long convo – you leave feeling like he really was happy to know you, despite his superstar status.

A “thing” that current Tiffin owners do is to bring in a cabinet door from their rig for Bob to sign, like getting your cowboy boot signed at a country music concert. 

The 90-minute tour itself was fantastic, but they did not allow photos to be taken on the factory floor.  So if you’re interested in the fascinating ins-and-outs of RV construction, check our 2024 post from Northern Indiana and our tour of the Fleetwood factory. In the meantime, enjoy the subtle workplace bullying in the bathroom stalls at the Tiffin factory!

COON DOG CEMETERY

Another fascinating thing to do near Red Bay is to visit the one and only Coon Dog Cemetery.  Here, deep in the wilderness, these beloved hunting companions have made the ultimate trip HOME.

In 1937, Key Underwood lost his beloved companion, Troop, and decided to bury him in the Alabama woods where they hunted together.  His gravestone remains, hand-chiseled from a rock salvaged from a nearby chimney.

Word spread, and almost a century later, Troop has been joined by more than 185 other Coon Dogs, whose (1) owner must claim it to be a Coon, (2) a witness must concur that it is a Coon, and (3) a member of the graveyard committee must see the Coon and agree it to be such.

What’s a Coon Hound, you might ask? They are a specific breed of hunting dog that are superstars at hunting raccoons and other critters, usually by chasing and cornering them up a tree. Many of the gravesites and memorials illustrate this favorite activity!

The gravestones run the gamut from simple to ornate, with a few of them more elaborate than many human memorials, and many decorated with flowers and flags, leashes and collars.  Visitors leave coins on the sites that particularly move them. 

It was fascinating to wander the grounds, and it’s definitely the homemade headstones that are the most touching! May we all strive to be “good as the best and better than the rest.”

Phil Campbell

DISMALS CANYON & THE DISMALITES

It may sound like the name of a rock band, but no – Dismals Canyon and its tiny, glowing inhabitants can only be found HOME here in Northern Alabama.

Located in Phil Campbell, Alabama, Dismals Canyon might LOOK like Middle Earth, but NO, you’re still in the Deep South. Believe it or not, Alabama is actually the fourth most biologically diverse state in the nation!

IN THE DAYTIME: take a 1.5 mile loop hike along the canyon floor, in a labyrinth of caverns, grottos, narrow passageways, swinging bridges, towering rock formations, moss-covered everything, waterfalls and streams … an extraordinary amount of beauty on a relatively short trek. Finn is happy to report that Dismals Canyon is dog-friendly!

Dismals Canyon is the only place in the world where you’ll find bioluminescent glowworms called dismalites. They are tiny and glow from both their head and their butt. Obviously, the only way to see them is a nighttime (guided) hike, in pitch darkness. A group of 15 of us clutched hands and made our way throughout these woods like Helen Keller, with arms outstretched and (presumably) wild looks on our faces, for more than an hour.

Why do they glow? Because they can! These tiny glowing larvae spin a microscopic web, hang out behind it, and just wait for dinner — other tiny flying insects — to appear. DINNER TIME! Depending on the day, you can find hundreds to thousands of dismalites living on green walls like this, assuming you’re willing to brave the dark, since they are not visible during the day. But the night tour is one of the most unusual things you will ever do!

What else does Dismals Canyon have? It has a lot of tight squeezes!!

Are you curious about a town named Phil Campbell, Alabama?  It was named for a railroad engineer, who was promised to have the town named after him, if he’d build a depot for the railroad when it came through. It’s one of only two Alabama towns to bear the first and last name of an individual (the other being Susan Moore). 

In 1995, the Brooklyn NY writer Phil Campbell organized a gathering of sorts in this town, with an open invitation to anyone with the name “Phil Campbell.” 22 Phil Campbells and 1 Phyllis Campbell attended from all over the U.S., and Phil Campbell Days is still an annual event every June.

It was also here that we learned about a really cool free bird identification app called Merlin Bird ID from Cornell University. Basically, if you hear a bird chirping, you hit “record” and it will tell you what kind of bird it is, show you a picture, tell you more about it, and allow you to save it to your “life list” of birds you’ve met. Really fun, check it out! Here’s my best bird picture ever, a WESTERN MEADOWLARK if you care, from Badlands National Park in 2019.

Huntsville

U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER

For those who have just about enough of the nonsense on Planet Earth and dream of a HOME far, far away, this is an epic place! U.S. Space and Rocket Center is our second major space museum, the other being Johnson Space Center Houston, which we visited in 2018. But we liked this one even better!

Huntsville is known as “Rocket City,” since the rockets that launched the first American satellite and sent astronauts to the moon were developed here. 

Considered one of the best space museums in the world, it boasts a beautiful, interactive museum, outdoor rocket park, the Saturn I and Saturn II rockets, a full-size International Space Center, planetarium shows and much more.

There was space stuff to geek out on, at every turn. From the Saturn V Moon Rocket to the Apollo 16 to the Pathfinder, the world’s only full-stack space shuttle display, virtual reality and g-force simulator rides … you could easily spend a full day or longer here.

They also host summer Space Camp (and Robotics Camp, and Cyber Camp, and Aviation Camp), weeklong sleepaway programs for 9-18 year olds.  Although shockingly expensive ($1,899+ for 6 days and 5 nights), many current astronauts started their careers with a passionate visit to Space Camp.

Our favorite was the full-sized International Space Station. It was bigger than we thought (certainly bigger than our RV), but not somewhere we’d want to live for months or years on end. Really, really cool, with a lot of buttons and levers and controls that you would want to know how to properly use before taking up residence here.

Also, the world’s best logo! Because the #1 question about the ISS is “how do they go to the bathroom?” Call in the Orbital Outhouse Team!!

The planetarium show was a hoot.  Rather than being a boring movie, it was an interactive show run by a live moderator, who was hilarious and encouraged plenty of crowd participation, highlighting “our place in space” and making us feel very small indeed, relatively speaking.

We explored all the well-done and hands-on exhibits and displays, and deem it a “not-to-be-missed” stop when in this area.  Still on our bucket list?  A space launch from Cape Canaveral.  Someday!

Predictably, there are space tie-in’s throughout Huntsville. Case in point, the best-selling beer “Monkeynaut.” The first monkeys to survive a spaceflight and return alive were Able (a rhesus) and Baker (a squirrel monkey) in 1959. Back on Earth, Monkeynaut is a damn tasty brew, made in a former high school gymnasium at Straight To Ale.

MONTE SANO STATE PARK

It’s pretty cool to have a mountaintop state park not far from a major city center.  This 340 acre park has gazillions of hiking trails, a planetarium with Saturday night shows, 18 holes of disc golf, and peace and quiet galore.

Thankfully, it also has sturdy brick bathhouses, necessitated by strong tornadoes that roared through during our stay, prompting a not-fun evening hunkered in the brick bathhouses of the campground.  This is our fifth close call with tornadoes (second of this trip alone), and we are getting frightfully good at packing our “go bag” and executing a multi-pronged approach of weather data analysis. Enormous trees were blown over like matchsticks for the length of the six mile road leading to Monte Sano and power was out for the rest of our stay.  

But we lived to tell the tale, and accept that life away from our Arizona HOME is always going to be interesting!

Scottsboro

UNCLAIMED BAGGAGE

Unclaimed Baggage is the nation’s only retailer of airline’s lost and unclaimed items, trying to find a new HOME for all those strays.  That’s right, that Sony Walkman you left in the seatback pocket and didn’t want to bother tracking down, can be picked up for a song here.  It’s an astonishing melee of stuff and a must-see roadside attraction.

Airlines use sophisticated technology to track your luggage, meaning 99.5% of bags are reunited with their owners right away. If a bag is really lost, a claim is paid to the passenger. It’s only after an unclaimed bag (and what they say is an exhaustive search) has been orphaned for at least three months (a fate realized by only 0.03% of luggage), this place steps in.

Unclaimed Baggage has purchasing agreements with all the major airlines. Only about 1/3 of the items they sort through by the tractor-trailer-full can be sold — but that still amounts to 7,000 items each day. A lot of the items are what you’d expect …. Sunglasses. Jackets. Kindle/e-readers galore. Mountains of headphones.

But their in-store museum displays some of the more — UNUSUAL — items left behind. Shrunken heads. Suits of armor. Scuba tanks. Rare antiquities. Crazy stuff! How about a $4,000 bottle of cognac.

They are on the hunt for one-of-a-kind, valuable, like-new, designer’ish type items that people would want to purchase at deeeeep discounts. A lot of it is brand-new with tags still on, but Unclaimed Baggage predicatably also runs Alabama’s largest dry-cleaning facility.

From sporting goods to jewelry to shoes, it’s all here, in a beautiful, well-lit, super-organized store! Like the Goodwill of your dreams, if Goodwill had high-end luxury items like Rolex watches, Birkin bags and a $18,000 (discounted price) engagement ring.

Did we buy anything? Why yes, we did. We passed on the blue sequin sports jersey, but scored some cute clothes for the grandkids, some brand-new Italian wedge sandals (complete with dust bag) for me, and a pair of Oakley sunglasses ($5!) for Philip — plus a great lunch from their in-store cafe.

Not going to Scottsboro, Alabama, anytime soon? No worries! You can buy their items online at unclaimedbaggage.com! But physically rooting through the store was a blast!

NATIONAL ROAD TRIP DAY!

This blog is being published on Memorial Day weekend 2025, and the Friday before every Memorial Day is always National Road Trip Day.  Our article “Oregon 101:  Cruisin’ Down The Oregon Coast” Was just published in RV Destinations Magazine‘s special print edition devoted to road trips!  We love this magazine and get lots of inspiration for our own trips. For now, we’ve just completed the first month of this particular 3.5-month road trip in our HOME ON WHEELS! We hope you enjoyed this Northern Alabama road trip!