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VALLEY — Laura Smith talked about tourism in Alabama at Wednesday’s noon hour meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Valley. It’s a subject she’s well versed in given four decades of experience at the Alabama Welcome Center on I-85. She hosted her final Tourism Day last week as the manager of the visitor center. She will be retiring this year after a 40-year career with the state’s tourism department.

Smith gave each member of the club a current highway map of the state and a copy of this year’s Sweet Home Alabama vacation guide. The magazine cover has a photo taken by a drone of a sunset at the Flagg Mountain Tower in Coosa County. This is the Year of Trails in Alabama. The Flagg Mountain Tower is the start of 170 miles of mountain hiking in Alabama to the Georgia line, where it’s another 160 miles to the start of the famed Appalachian Trail. The vacation guide divides the state into four regions: North, Central, South and Gulf Coast. Each region has many interesting places to see and things to do.

On the official state highway map, Governor Kay Ivey makes a pitch to Alabama natives and visitors alike to make a special effort to explore the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. “Step back in time with the founding of our nation and participate in America’s journey for independence, liberty and self-governance,” the governor writes.

A visit to the American Village is a good way to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday.

Smith likes for people to think in terms of making day trips in Alabama. There are some good ones that are less than an hour away. She recommends taking a drive down I-85 to the state capital. There’s a lot to see in Montgomery including the state capitol complex, the Dexter Avenue personage and the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the Freedom Rides Museum, the Rosa Parks Museum, the Civil Rights Center, the First White House of the Confederacy, Old Alabama Town, the Hank Williams Museum, Riverfront Park and a great place for children known as The MOOSE-eum.

On the way to Montgomery, there’s a good side trip to Moton Field in Tuskegee where the famed Tuskegee Airmen from World War II trained. A little farther down the Interstate is the Blue Ribbon Dairy in Tallassee where people can see ice cream being made. (It’s a treat to sample some of it!)

The drive up Highway 280 to Birmingham offers another such stop at the Blue Bell factory in Sylacauga, where visitors can see Blue Bell Ice Cream being made. Guided tours offer the chance to sample some of their homemade-style ice cream. In the Birmingham area, any resident of the state can be initiated into what it means to be a true Alabamian: to climb the Vulcan tower.

Birmingham has long been a place proud to have built a huge statue of a burly, bearded, bare-bottomed man to tower over its entire population. Birmingham never forgets its roots and Vulcan is a symbol of the city’s iron origins.

Anyone going to Birmingham needs to visit the botanical gardens, the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, sport venues such as Regions Field, Legacy Arena, Protective Stadium and the Barber Motorsports Park. Like Montgomery, Birmingham is home to important sites on the Civil Rights Trail, including the 16th Street Baptist Church, the Birmingham National Civil Rights Monument, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum.

The Barber Motorsports Park was started in 2003 by George Barber Jr.. a former race car driver, motorcycle enthusiast, real estate developer, philanthropist and chairman of Barber Dairies, a company founded by his father in the 1930s. For years, Barber Dairies was the largest dairy company in Alabama.

George Barber Jr. started collecting motorcycles in the 1970s. He now has more than 1,400 of them. The Guinness Book or World Records lists his four-story motorcycle museum as housing the largest motorcycle collection in the world. Visitors to Barber’s motorcycle museum can see almost every make and model of motorcycle ever made.

Barber has something interesting in South Alabama. Many call it Bamahenge. In 2012, he commissioned artist Mark Cline to build an exact replica of the famed Stonehenge in England. It’s an amazing work of fiberglass and can be seen at Barber’s Gulf Coast Marina in Elberta, Alabama. Elberta is a city of approximately 2,000 people in Baldwin County on Alabama’s coast.

Smith said there are some really good four-hour trips to north Alabama. A must-see is the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. It’s here that all things aviation are highlighted with special lectures, events and planetarium shows. The Center is having its 35th anniversary this year.

“Anybody here ever been to Unclaimed Baggage?” she asked. “It’s in Scottsboro, and is a fascinating place to go to. There’s some truly beautiful scenery in north Alabama. It’s a great place to go canoeing or kayaking. Little River Canyon, DeSoto Falls and Noccalula Falls in Gadsden and good places to go to.”

Once known as the Sock Capital of the World, Fort Payne is another good place to visit. It’s been better known in recent years as the home of the Country Music super group Alabama. There’s a museum there all about this group, and with country music having its centennial year in 2025 now is an ideal time to go there. A fun activity in the museum is a chance to hear yourself sing in a recording.

Northwest Alabama is another interesting place to visit for its role in music history. In the heyday of pop music, Muscle Shoals was the home of the Swampers, and many famous people came there to make music. It’s where the name “Sweet Home Alabama” was born.

College football is a great tourism draw in Alabama. “We have some great football in this state,” Smith said. “Auburn is only 25 miles away, and football is big-time there. It’s also great across the state in Tuscaloosa, but the sport is huge not just for those two cities. Football has been good to other Alabama towns as well.”

Troy, Jacksonville State, UAB, South Alabama, and the HCBU schools of Tuskegee, Alabama State and Alabama A&M bring life to their towns on game days.

Smith has no regrets on having been involved in Alabama’s tourism industry for a long time.

“We have the second largest Alabama Welcome Center here in Lanett,” she said. “The largest center in the state is on 1-10 at Grand Bay, Alabama in Mobile County. It’s the largest to accommodate people during hurricane season if there’s a need for that. There’s a new welcome center on I-65 in Ardmore, Alabama near the Tennessee state line. It looks just like ours but is not the same size.”

The welcome centers are owned by the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT), which maintains the buildings and their grounds. People are always stopping at the welcome center to ask basic questions about a map. The staff has long learned to be patient with this and to work visitors through any misunderstanding they might have.

“We had a couple stop by here one time that was lost,” she said. “They were from Atlanta and wanted to visit someone in South Carolina. They told us they couldn’t understand why they were in Alabama. They thought they had to go south from where they were to get to South Carolina. We knew we had to be very careful in telling them how to get back on the Interstate to get back to Atlanta and where to go from there. Some people who stop here think they can go back to the road and take a left. That’s not the way to travel on an Interstate. You have to go to the next exit, turn off, go across the bridge and then take the left to get into the north-bound lane. You have to be very, very patient in dealing with some people. You talk slowly, and make sure they understand what you are telling them.”

There have been situations where elderly people dealing with dementia drive up to the center not knowing where they are or how they got there. Then it becomes a matter of tracking down family members to come and get them. That’s not always a simple matter.

Then there’s the problem of having a wreck in either the north-bound or the south-bound lanes. Not everyone has GPS or knows how to use it.

“We are directing people all the time around traffic accidents,” Smith said. “We tell them how to get on Highway 29 and where it will be best for them to get back on I-85.”