Autumn in Downtown Huntsville

I went for a walk in downtown Huntsville yesterday to see the 4th annual Pop-Up Parks and Arts Huntsville’s Pumpkin Patch (and because downtown is always a beautiful place to walk, especially on an autumn afternoon).

The Trump and Clinton pumpkins are at Green Bus Brewing.

The pumpkins (decorated by local artists, groups, and businesses) are on display in downtown business's windows through Oct 31^st.

A cool window display at Clinton Row

Another Trumpkin (at Clinton Row)

The Pop-Up Parks will be in place through Oct. 23^rd.

Planet Pinball (awesome!) is in front of Sam & Greg’s.

Sam & Greg’s Pizzeria & Gelateria during a rare lull in outdoor patrons between lunch and dinner

The Garage at Clinton Row is coming along nicely. They’ve got the new decorative metal screening installed on one side of the garage, and the stores (carved out of parking space on the bottom floor) have a variety of interesting facade materials in place. The first shop opening is happening this weekend. 

I spotted an artist at work on a new mural in the alley between UG White and Clinton Row (near Christina Wegman's Alley Cats mural).

A Winery and the Fire Hydrant Capital of the World

Jules J. Berta Vineyards is less than an hour’s drive from Huntsville and it’s in the Fire Hydrant Capital of the World!

Jules J. Berta is one of six wineries that make up the North Alabama Wine Trail. Technically, you can visit all six in one day, but I decided I’d split them up into a few different trips and enjoy some leisurely sightseeing too. I’ve driven through the Fire Hydrant Capital (Albertville) many times before but have never stopped to check it out. Now, I had time to stop and see the chrome-plated one millionth fire hydrant on display in front of the Chamber of Commerce.

The Mueller Company's one millionth fire hydrant in downtown Albertville

Event area on the grounds of the winery

They grow Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, Petit Syrah, Blaufrankisch, and Sylvaner grapes.

My daughter came along with me for her very first wine tasting. I’m not much of a wine drinker; I just use sweet wine as a topping on vanilla ice cream and for baking wine cake, but I love to visit places (such as vineyards) where things are made. You can sample six wines at Jules J. Berta. We only tried sweet wines including a blush muscadine, a white muscadine, watermelon, and blueberry. The blueberry wine is going in a cake. We loved the sweet muscadine wines! 

"A Southern Thang...y'all wouldn't understand"

They have some great names for their wines, such as White Trash, Black Widow, Dixie Suga', and Mauvais Juju. They design their own labels and a local artist does the artwork.

The gift shop / tasting room is great. The owners made their own poured-concrete bar, embedded with a few pieces of colored glass, and they used a lot of corrugated metal throughout the room. 

Albertville also has an adorable downtown Main Street with historic buildings (don’t all Southern towns?), along with a train depot, and a pre-Civil War cemetery. Most of the town was destroyed by a tornado in 1908 and rebuilt after that.

Several businesses on Main Street have signs only in Spanish and a couple sell quinceañera dresses, so I figured there must be a large Hispanic population in this tiny town of 21,500. (City data shows it's 30%).

The train depot is right on Main Street. It is one of the few structures in Albertville that survived the 1908 tornado. It was built in 1892 by the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. Now it's used as a senior center.

This is the first time I've seen a Confederate monument that wasn't from the 1920's or earlier. This one, at the county courthouse, is from 1996.

The Albertville Museum is located in the Little Branch Primitive Church building.

The West Main Street Cemetery was established in the late 1850’s. Thomas Albert (1796-1876), the town’s namesake and a veteran of the War of 1812, is buried here.

SWIRLL

Colleges and Universities are so much fun…when you’re no longer a student! Recently, I had to pass some time waiting for my son so I did a little urban exploring and ended up at UAHuntsville’s  SWIRLL facility (Severe Weather Institute - Radar and Lightning Laboratories). I had seen a picture of its lobby in the newspaper and wanted to see it for myself, so I went in and gave myself a tour. I only encountered one employee and he said it was his first day, but they had informational signs posted in the lobby.

The SWIRLL facility, which opened in 2015, is used for research on severe and hazardous weather, radar meteorology, lightning meteorology, lightning physics, and air quality, as well as to promote research, education, and outreach in these areas. I expect that tours can be arranged, but I just showed up on the spur of the moment.

A 3-story spiral staircase surrounds a computer-controlled globe used to display weather patterns. Beneath it, a compass rose embedded in the floor includes the Greek names for the winds. 

There are five roof platforms that support instrument testing and data collection.

A High Bay is used for maintenance and fabrication of mobile platforms and other instruments.

Observation balcony in the high bay

Mobile research platform in the parking lot

An aside and a rant: Thank you UAH for having public buildings that are actually open to the public! And for not telling me I can’t take photos outdoors! I have been very annoyed lately with people telling me that I can’t take photos of building exteriors. In San Antonio I was photographing former World’s Fair buildings-turned-U.S. Federal Buildings when a worker, who claimed to be a photographer, came outside and told me it is illegal to take photos of federal buildings and I could be arrested for it. Oh, really? I do it all the time, but I left so as not to potentially be arrested. Back at my hotel I did some online research and found that such cases have actually been adjudicated in the federal courts and it is NOT illegal to take photos of federal buildings from areas open to the public (i.e. where I was in a parking lot.) 

The same thing happened in Huntsville when I was taking photos of the very cool “Breaking Earth's Bond” sculpture at the Redstone Gateway Office Park (where I also explored before going to SWIRLL). A woman told me that no one is allowed to take pictures of anything at the Boeing facility (including outdoors) and I could get in trouble if my picture showed up on Facebook. Now, the little park with the sculpture may be Boeing property (not sure), so maybe they can have such a rule – still not sure and I don’t like it. (I have a pension with Boeing though, so maybe I had better not complain.) When the sculpture was first unveiled in 2013 the newspaper referred to it as a “public sculpture” and I did photograph it back then, when the Boeing buildings were still under construction).