Alabama | Mama of Letters

The last place I want to share with you from our trip to Biloxi is the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park located in Mobile, AL. My boys have enjoyed learning about military vehicles and the history that goes with them ever since they started playing digital games. Of course, my husband, who is a history professor, has been interested in this stuff since he was a young boy too, and the park definitely brought out the kid in him.

Learn about the impressive history of the USS Alabama here.

This is the third military museum we’ve visited (not counting plenty of military exhibits we’ve stopped to see at other places), but it’s the first warship they have been able to tour. It was quite impressive with many exhibits, short films, and of course, just seeing the inside.

Took one look at that and thought, I’m glad I wasn’t the one doing those dishes.

The park also has many aircraft both inside and outside the buildings, and the other big highlight was touring a submarine.

Here is the USS Drum.

If you’re interested in military history and are near Mobile, Alabama, this place is a must see.

When we spent a week in Biloxi, Mississippi, we drove one day to Mobile, Alabama, which was only an hour’s drive away. We had two places we wanted to visit in Mobile, and one of them was the Mobile Museum of Art (MMofA). If you’re in the area and you enjoy art, I recommend that you visit this museum.

MMofA has a collection of 10,000 pieces of art, but they are not all on display at the same time. You can see on their website what they are showcasing at any given time. We were lucky to view some of their Native American art (always a favorite with me), and Asian art, which was a treat since the boys and I studied Ancient China this year. We also loved their large collection of Alabama artists, and they had several temporary exhibits that we enjoyed too.

My favorite exhibit was The Mobile Delta: Glass & Light by Rene Culler who is an Assistant Professor and the Glass Program Coordinator at the University of South Alabama.

I have fallen in love with the marsh areas along the southern coasts. I love the colors, plants, light, birds, frogs, aquatic animals and everything about this habitat. It’s enchanting. So when I stepped into the area where Culler’s glass representation of the Mobile Delta is installed next to some windows with the natural light, I was blown away (pardon the pun). I’ve always been fascinated with glass artists (second only to pottery), so I felt this was the perfect medium to capture the beauty and constant changes of the delta.

I didn’t take any photographs inside the museum, but MMofA did a short WebTALK with Rene Culler, which you can view on their website, but I will also embed that here. You can see some of this beautiful exhibit in the video.