Last night was the worst night of sleep we've had on the entire trip. "B" and "Z" shared a room, and "A" and "T" shared another, leaving "K" and I with "C". I made it into bed at about 2am, and "K" told me she made it into bed after 3. However, about 4am, "C" was inconsolable, and nothing could get her to settle down and sleep. I'm not sure if it was just too much fun yesterday coupled with the super late bedtime or what, but we gave up after a little while and pulled her into her bed, where she settled down for a few minutes but not long. We wrestled with her for a while, trying to get her to lay down and rest for a bit, but she was still awake when the sun came up so I got up with her, turned on a little Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and made her sit next to me on the couch. The TV did the trick, and after about 30 minutes, she was down for the count. I got up, showered, and saw she was still sleeping so I crashed on the bed and we wound up getting up at about 8.
We still had a ton of packing up to do (plus breakfast for everybody) so the lack of sleep and late start didn't do us any favors, but we managed to get out and loaded up in the van 30 seconds before out 11am checkout. Phew! My niece recommended we hit "the bigfoot museum" on our way out of town, so of course we had to do that.
It almost felt like walking onto the set of a Disney movie - epic adventuring music was playing, and there were props lining the wall. It felt a lot like "Up" or maybe "Strange World". Once you pay your admission, you make a right turn into their "DNA" room. The crown jewel of this room is a 3+ foot long sasquatch poop. "T" was entranced. This room has a desk with a sign on it saying it's a functioning research lab and that you cannot touch anything on the desk, so we tried to maintain a respectable distance. We lef tthis room and went into a small theatre which had a video talking about some of the sasquatch history while some very 90s-looking animations played. The most interesting part of this for me was when it listed all of the different names for sasquatch and the countries they're used in - there were quite a few! We walked around a bit more and there were maps with sightings marked, witness drawings, audio recordings, and even objects that had "most likely been handled by a sasquatch". Fascinating. I'm convinced!
So long Blue Ridge, next stop Alabama! We drove to Montgomery and stopped at the Civil Rights Memorial Museum shortly before they closed. This was a pretty small memorial/museum (and definitely more memorial than museum), but it was really well done. They also had a short video with interviews and information about some of the civil rights challenges that was really well done. It was hard not to get emotional as they talked about Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, and George Floyd. On our way out, we asked at the desk if there was anything else we should see on our visit, but apparently the city shuts down at about 4pm, so they didn't have many suggestions.
About a block away from the museum was the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr served as pastor for a few years in the late 1950s. It was pretty hot out, so we didn't walk around much more, but we climbed back into our van and drove past a beautiful Rosa Parks memorial statue.
Our next stop was Riverfront Park, to see how it stacked up against the Riverfront Park we have at home. I gotta say - it has NOTHING on home. Maybe it's just because we were there after 5pm, but there was simply nothing going on. There was a parked river cruise boat with no one around, and an empty amphitheatre, but I think we only saw one other person down there at all, on his way to go fishing.
We piled back into the van and headed to our hotel, hitting up Waffle House on the way. We got a few suggestions from my family and put them to full use. I was a big fan of getting peanut butter chips and pecans on my waffle. Yum! We were all exhausted, so we crashed shortly after arriving in our hotel.