🙋🏻♀️ Day 64! Woke up early & pulled out at 7:20 am! 🌞 Oh it’s humid out! 539 miles today! *** Selma, Alabama was a trading center and market town during the antebellum years of King Cotton in the South. It was also an important armaments-manufacturing and iron shipbuilding center for the Confederacy during the Civil War, surrounded by miles of earthen fortifications. The Confederate forces were defeated during the Battle of Selma, in the final full month of the war. In modern times, the city is best known for the 1960s civil rights movement and the Selma to Montgomery marches, beginning with “Bloody Sunday” in 1965 and ending with 25,000 people entering Montgomery at the end of the last march to press for voting rights. This activism generated national attention for social justice and that summer, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress to authorize federal oversight and enforcement of constitutional rights of all American citizens. This march represented one of the political and emotional peaks of the modern civil-rights movement. On March 7, 1965, approximately 600 civil rights marchers departed Selma on US Hwy 80, heading east to the capital. After they passed over the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and left the boundaries of the city, they were confronted by county sheriff’s deputies and state troopers, who attacked them using tear gas, horses and billy clubs, and drove them back across the bridge. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized and 50 more were treated for lesser injuries. Because of the brutal attacks, this became known as “Bloody Sunday”. The Edmund Pettus Bridge was built in 1940, named after a former Confederate brigadier general, US senator, and leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. It’s a steel arch bridge 🌉 that Hwy 80 crosses the Alabama River, span of 250 ft. It was declared a National Historical Landmark in 2013 & we crossed it thanks to GPS! 😂 As we turned the corner in Montgomery, Alabama….for as far as you could see on 1,600 acres, sits the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, LLC (HMMA), Hyundai’s first assembly and manufacturing plant in the United States. This $1.8 billion automotive plant is one of the most advanced assembly plants in North America. HMMA assembles Sonata and Elantra sedans and the Santa Fe, producing 3000,000 vehicles per year! It opened in 2005. Hyundai chose Montgomery as the location for its first United States assembly and manufacturing plant because of its high-quality workforce, proximity to U.S. population centers and the superb automotive parts supply chain available in the region. Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama is consistently ranked as one of the highest quality plants in Hyundai’s worldwide operations through the ISO Certification process. ***As we traveled through these 11 states, we can’t get over all the Subways & Sonic’s……and they are packed! In Dothan, Alabama we saw our first Publix since we left Florida and this town also had a National Peanut Festival on US 231! Everything peanut! We made it to I-10 at 1:00pm. We arrived at Compass RV Park in St Augustine at 6:10pm. What a long day! At 6:30pm we heard…”grandma, grandpa”, and we were instantly rejuvenated! We all made s’mores around the campfire! What a great night! Mackenzie & Jensen have school yet but Tanner just finished pre-K, so he got to spend the night with us! Oh happy grandparents! 😊 ❤️❤️❤️
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