Hanging out on Miramar Beach in Destin, FL, watching the sunsets.  More to follow.

Montgomery, AL....."birthplace of Civil Rights" and the first Capitol of the Confederacy.  Martin Luther King Jr moved from Atlanta to become pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church from 1954 through 1960.  In 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus which launched the Montgomery bus boycott which lasted 18 months until the Supreme Court struck down laws segregating public transportation. King led the boycott and organized the Southern Leadership Conference while in Montgomery.

Alabama State Capitol

First White House of the Confederacy

The Civil Rights Memorial Center is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit that combats hate, intolerance and discrimination through education and litigation.

Dexter Avenue Parsonage where the King family lived

Park located by the Rosa Parks bus stop

Court Square Fountain built on the site of slave trading

Home of F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Attended the Montgomery Symphony season opening concert

Off to Florida Panhandle beaches.....

Birmingham, Alabama. Next stop on our trip through the South. Stayed at Oak Mountain State Park just south of Birmingham.  Beautiful, wooded park with golf course, stables, demonstration farm, lakes, hiking trails.

Visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Powerful exhibits, history and photos/art representing the Civil Rights struggle. The Institute requested no pictures. We took the images/pictures with us from our experience.

Kelly Ingram Park....across the street from the Institute, a place of "revolution and reconciliation".

Martin Luther King

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, key leader in Civil Rights struggle in Birmingham

Four girls killed in bombing of church

Adjacent to the Institute and Park is the 16th Street Baptist Church where 50 years ago on September 15, 1963 tragedy struck as four young girls attending sunday school died when a dynamite bomb, placed under a stairwell by members of the Ku Klux Klan, exploded. One of the church deacons took us on a tour....

Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley

Special memorial gift from people of Wales, designed by John Petts

We were very moved by our experience at the Institute, Park and Church.  Leaving for Montgomery, Al....

Memphis, Tennessee....take a right on......

Go past.....

Turn onto....

We are now settled into Graceland RV Park, across the street from Graceland...

Sun Studio, the birthplace of rock and roll.  The original recording studio in Memphis where Stars like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and others started their careers. It is still an active recording studio in the evenings where new stars are waiting to be "born"...

The "Million Dollar Quartet...Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis

Unknown new star waiting to be born...

Downtown Memphis is home to the Rock and Soul Museum, provides the history of how the Blues, Country, Soul and Rock and Roll blend together and the Legends of the music.

Across the street is the Gibson Guitar Factory where we saw how the guitars are made, both specialty orders and standard instruments.  You can wander into their show room and see how easy it is to purchase your own Les Paul Guitar with easy to learn lesson packages.  We escaped without guitars....at least for now.

Wandered up and down famous Beale Street....

Visited the National Civil Rights Museum located at the site of Martin Luther King's assassination
at the Lorraine Motel near downtown Memphis. The museum and the area is under a 27 million dollar renovation. Parts of the Museum are housed in the boarding house from which James Earl Ray fired the rifle shot.

Room 306 and the balcony where MLK was shot

Front of the boarding house where Ray was staying...

The boarding house bathroom window where the rifle shot originated from.

The lunch counter scene that started the Movement...

Headed to Birmingham....