Alabama is a history and outdoor lover’s paradise. The Appalachian Mountains start in northern Alabama, forming high mountain ridges and deep valleys. Below the hills are rolling plains that reach the coast’s white sugar sand beaches. The land in between is the Fall Line, where erosion-resistant rocks form a barrier of waterfalls and whitewater. These distinct ecosystems make Alabama the most biologically diverse state east of the Mississippi and are why the Bankhead Wilderness was recognized as the first wilderness in the east. Alabama offers a broad range of outdoor recreation from skiing to scuba diving, although the highlights have to be hiking, biking, and water sports.
Alabama is known as ‘The Heart of Dixie’ with an extensive collection of antebellum homes and the Confederate Whitehouse. Correspondingly, the state was active in the Civil Rights Movement with memorial sights including the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Martin Luther King’s Dexter Parsonage and the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, and the Freedom Riders Museum in Anniston. Huntsville was home to Warner Von Braun and the birthplace of the US space program. And, of course, rock and roll just wouldn’t be the same without the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.