Saturday, December 7, 2019 - Day Trip in north Alabama

We had an ambitious day ahead of us so we got an early start with our goal to be at Tigers for Tomorrow when they opened at 9:00 a.m. with a stop to Noccalula Falls before.

We had visited Noccalula Falls in Gadsen before (see my February post) but since it was on the way and I wanted to play with the settings on my camera with my new lens, we made a quick stop.

We arrived at Tigers for Tomorrow shortly after they opened and basically had the place to ourselves.  This is a really neat animal refuge that takes in tigers, lions, ligers, bears, wolves, etc.  They are a non-breeding facility and instead focus on taking in animals that others can no longer take care of, animals people often thought would make cool pets.

A very curious emu

Paul always loves the goats!

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker

The refuge has a pair of ligers who were rescued as cubs.  A liger is the off-spring of a male lion and a female tiger.  They don't occur in nature as the two species never cross paths so any ligers you find will have been breed in captivity.  A quick online search will show you how much controversy there is surrounding whether it is ethical to breed ligers which I won't get into here.  Tigers for Tomorrow does not breed ligers and from what I can tell has not taken a position on this controversy.  They instead focus on providing a home for animals that need it, regardless of how they came into being.  Here are some photos of their ligers.  As you can see, the lion DNA is dominant but you can see faint stripes on them especially on the lower part of their body.

Before this visit, I had not seen such variations in the coloring of tigers.

These servals are a smaller cat that seem to have a lot of personality.

After leaving Tigers for Tomorrow, we headed for Blount County, Alabama, home to 3 covered bridges (and a waterfall).  All three of the bridges are still used by vehicle traffic and so we had the chance to drive over each of them.

The first covered bridge we visited was Horton Mill Covered Bridge.

We then stopped at Palisades Park for a picnic lunch and were in a for a treat with an unexpected view.

Turkey vultures were circling

After lunch, we continued on to Easley Covered Bridge.

Our last covered bridge for the day was Swann Covered Bridge.

Our last stop was Mardis Mill Falls which turned out to be well worth the stop and a great use of my wide angle lens.

A wildlife refuge, two waterfalls, a county park, and three covered bridges seemed enough for a day and we were ready to head home and so that is what we did.  There are so many cool things to see in Alabama!