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Went to the fair on Monday with my niece and nephew. They were excited to ride the DART Rail.

There was a rock climbing exhibit at the Jeep area. Check out those climbing skills!

Fletcher’s corndogs are still the best!

Big Tex!

They had anti-bacterial stuff gel everywhere. Gotta make sure your hands are clean.

Some pictures from the backyard circus.

The kids rode this coaster called Crazy Mouse. Eric was too short so Teresa had to go with him. We couldn’t get a clear picture of them riding it so we got at picture of the trash can instead.

Funnel cake!

There was a girl walking around making balloon figures. Jessica got a flower hat and Eric got a snake. The snake was cool. It actually made a rattling noise.

Welcome to Mississippi!

After Tuscaloosa, we made our way to Jackson, MS. There was a really bad storm that was brewing because of the hurricane in the Gulf. Instead of pulling over to the side of the road, I decided to keep on driving through the downpour. It was pretty bad. We could barely see the cars in front of us, even though they had their lights on. We finally got to Jackson, MS in the evening. Even though it was dark, that didn’t stop us from checking out the capitol.

The next morning we went to the downtown area and visited the old capitol building. They offered a free self-guided tour with a lot of interactive displays.

We also took a tour of the governor’s mansion. No cameras were allowed in the mansion so we only have shots from the outside.

Before we left Jackson, we visited the capitol again during the daytime.

We hear that there was a pretty good restaurant called The Cock of the Walk, so obviously, we tried it. We had a window view of the river so that was nice. We ate and drank from metal plates and metal cups. There are only two options to select from, fried chicken and fried catfish, so we ordered both! Our meal came with mustard greens, black-eyed peas, pickeled onions, jalapeno skillet cornbread, and hushpuppies… mmm, mmm, good! Oh! Can’t forget the deep-fried corn-on-the-cob… Southern home-cookin’! Gotta love it!

From this point on, we basically booked it back home through Louisiana (quick stop to pee and take a picture)

And we finally made it back to Texas!

So after 8 days, 2,222 miles, we were finally home!

Welcome to Alabama!

Didn’t know which sign to use.

Sorry Allen, we didn’t stop by the fireworks place, but we did take a picture of it.

Mercedes factory!

It wasn’t as cool as the BMW factory, but I suppose I’m biased. =p We also took the tour at the MB factory. Somehow we got stuck with a bunch of old people. Like as old as your grandparents. They were slow. Our tour was supposed to be 1 hour, but it ended up taking much, much longer…

Oh, look, there’s a trash can on display… hmmm, nope, just there to catch the water dripping from the ceiling.

So at the MB factory, we saw a poster with a picture of a Benz in front of a barn-looking restaurant. There were directions to the restaurant next to it. It looked interesting so we decided to go there after the tour. It was in the middle of nowhere in a residential neighborhood so we were a bit hesitant when we pulled up, but it actually turned out to be a cool stop. The decor was very unique and the ribs were really good! Definitely a hole-in-the-wall type of place, but apparently it’s pretty well-known because there were pictures of famous people up on the wall. Good find for us!

While we were still in Alabama, we decided to check out the local scenery since the area is very historical. So we stopped off at the Tuscaloosa visitor’s center and took a self-guided driving tour of the city. The tour of  went by pretty quickly and at times it was hard to follow. We were supposed to play the CD and look around as it guided us through the downtown area, but we were always somehow off and looking at the next stop on the tour so we would have to pause and restart the CD a bunch of times.

After we drove through the downtown area, we decided to go ahead and drive on to our next stop, Mississippi.