Gulf State Park, Gulf Shores

Best time to travel: March-May, Sept-Nov
Walk difficulty: Easy
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $

  • Recreation area in the Gulf of Mexico
  • In addition to beaches, the park includes marshland, boggy tea-colored streams, pine forests, and three spring-fed, fresh-water lakes

U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville

Best time to travel: March-May, Sept-Nov
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $$

  • Museum showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program
  • It showcases Apollo Program hardware and also houses interactive science exhibits, Space Shuttle exhibits, and Army rocketry and aircraft
  • The museum has more than 1,500 permanent rocketry and space exploration artifacts, as well as many rotating rocketry and space-related exhibits

Birmingham Museum of Art

Best time to travel: March-May, Sept-Nov
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $

  • Museum that has one of the most extensive collections of artwork in the Southeastern United States, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing numerous cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American
  • The museum is home to a collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c.1750

Little River Canyon National Preserve, Fort Payne

Best time to travel: March-May, Sept-Nov
Walk difficulty: Easy
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $

  • Preserve that protects what is sometimes said to be the nation’s longest mountaintop river, the Little River
  • The canyon was historically called “May’s Gulf”, “gulf” being a common term throughout the Cumberland Plateau for this sort of feature

DeSoto State Park, Lookout Mountain

Best time to travel: Jan-May, Oct-Dec
Walk difficulty: Moderate
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $

  • Public recreation area located on Lookout Mountain
  • The state park covers 3,502 acres of forest, rivers, waterfalls, and mountain terrain
  • It borders the Little River, which flows into the nearby Little River Canyon National Preserve
  • The 104-foot-tall DeSoto Falls, the state’s highest waterfall, is found in a separate part of the park 6 miles north of the main park

Cathedral Caverns State Park, Kennamer Cove

Best time to travel: March-May, Sept-Nov
Walk difficulty: Moderate
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $

  • Natural history preserve located in Kennamer Cove
  • Cathedral Caverns is a karst cave with a large stalagmite forest covering approximately 3 acres
  • The park’s main feature, first known as Bats Cave, was developed as a tourist attraction in the 1950s
  • Cathedral Caverns was declared a National Natural Landmark in 1972, and opened as a state park in 2000

National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery

Best time to travel: March-May, Sept-Nov
Ease of travel: Easy
Cost ($-$$-$$$): $

  • The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, is a national memorial to commemorate the black victims of lynching in the United States
  • It is intended to focus on and acknowledge past racial terrorism and advocate for social justice in America
  • It consists of a memorial square with 805 hanging steel rectangles representing each of the U.S. counties where a documented lynching took place
  • The monument was positively received by architectural critics, activists, and the general public