{"id":360,"date":"2015-10-25T03:07:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T03:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/?p=360"},"modified":"2022-12-26T15:41:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T15:41:31","slug":"alabama-the-jewel-of-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/alabama-the-jewel-of-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama, the jewel of North America"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year I drove through Alabama, from east to west, only stopping at a welcome center. The welcome center was nice, and the folks running the center were absolutely wonderful and enthusiastic about their state, as they should be. <\/p>\n

\"Alabama\"<\/p>\n

While Alabama might seem flat, and boring to drive through, know that Alabama holds the richest diversity of wildlife in all of North America. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama<\/a>, Alabama has 85 species of reptiles, 70 amphibians, 433 birds, 62 mammals, 450 species of fish, and of course plenty of insects and other invertebrates. It is, as a friend says “the Amazon of North America”, and like the Amazon in South America, it is just as in danger of over-exploitation for resources. <\/p>\n

Next time I’m in the state, I’ll spend more time outside of my car.<\/p>\n

Outdoor Alabama website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

Postscript: <\/p>\n

The road can be lonely and monotonous. It is a real joy to step out of your car and see a smiling human face. The experience of going from the road to foot can be like walking out of a dark tunnel into shining light; like leaving a cave and walking into the midst of a tribal celebration; like walking out of a dark theater, into a bright & busy shopping mall (that last example sucks). <\/p>\n

Upon entering the Alabama welcome center I was greeted by the cheerful voice of one of its employees. She looked like a young Sally Field and was dressed in a ranger uniform (the welcome centers are parks, after all). My mind can’t handle going from darkness to amazing beauty so quickly. Combined with the guilt of knowing I would not stay long in Alabama, I ducked behind the shelves of pamphlets, found a few, politely thanked her, and exited. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year I drove through Alabama, from east to west, only stopping at a welcome center. The welcome center was nice, and the folks running the center were absolutely wonderful and enthusiastic about their state, as they should be. While …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[54,50],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-passing-through","tag-54","tag-alabama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}