Recently in tourism Category

I did a quick booklet about Eco-Tourism opportunities in Alabama's Black Belt last weekend. I got to use a good number of photos I've taken over the years, some photos taken by Billy Milstead, the hardest working brother-in-law to date on Black Belt GPS coordinates and photos, and a few from elsewhere. The booklet turned out pretty good. I think I'll be able to use it for some other venues as well.

Here's the cover:

Just wrapping up a project for the Moore/Webb/Holmes Plantation near Marion, Alabama: http://www.holmesteadcompany.com. Done entirely in Wordpress using a template and making a few modifications. I like some of Wordpress. I think if I could get a little more time spent, I might have a better understanding of it than Movable Type, but I still have to admit I like this blogging program better--mainly because I've been using it for a good while.

The site is small, but I'm hoping that we'll add to it as time passes!

Friend Ben Burford and I took another fun trip into the Black Belt: this time to Selma, Old Cahaba (Cahawba), Marion and Greensboro, Alabama. Check out my flickr page for more photos or read about our first adventure on Ben's blog.

Had a very productive week this week. Lots of work on Brombergs website, most of the way done with the Tyler Eaton website, setup of the Mid-South RC&D website, a trip to Bibb and Perry County to do some work on a couple of tourism websites, the Highway 14 Antique Trail and even got to meet with a couple of potential new clients, including someone that raises all natural, grass-fed beef on their family farm that somehow they've managed to preserve as a family since the early 1800's. It was a really nifty place with a good supply of historic old buildings, a general store (long since closed for business) and a house that they are considering turning into a Bed and Breakfast--something the Black Belt really needs. Did not have as much time as I would have liked to snap photos, but plan to go back to the farm and Highway 14 in the coming weeks for some more photos. Here's one of Judson College, where several of my sisters attended.

Well, honestly, I've been a bit lax on updating my blog of late. I've really got to get back into the habit of the thing. I'm working on it. I have been really busy for the last couple of weeks. I've finally finished the annual report I do for the Alabama Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils (RC&D). I've been updating my Your Town Alabama blog, my Alabama Front Porches Blog and created another blog for others to post to called "Off the Porch," tied to the Alabama Front Porches website project.

I'm in the process of redesigning a website for Tyler Eaton Court Reporters--still a work in progress, but I did the old site as well. I'm getting ready to do some heavy lifting on the AIA Birmingham website: just lots of updates and an upcoming newsletter. I've been pretty busy getting the Bromberg's website situated--an old client that I lost to a big agency several years ago (though I didn't do their website in those days) that has just returned! Lots to do. (Oh, and I'm totally addicted to Facebook and Flickr.)

Had some great fun on Thursday of this week when my buddy Ben Burford and I took a daylong trip to the Black Belt for a photo tour. Left around 6:30 in the a.m. and back around 7 p.m. Took around 400 photos. We drove down I-59 to Eutaw and left the interstate world behind for almost the rest of the trip. Stopped at several historic homes, dilapidated shacks, downtowns, had a typical lunch of fried, fried, fried fish as Ezells and then bounced over to Marengo County for a quick stop by my homeplace in Octagon, Alabama before heading to the historical beauty of Gaineswood, Bluff Hall and the general granduer that is Demopolis. A quick stop for some of the Bird family road art and on towards home.

Here's a collage of some of the photos. I've uploaded a few more to my flickr account here.

Update: just posted some of my favorite photos from the trip to my flickr account.

Haven't really been doing a lot of posting this week. Have been doing a lot of work. Trying to wrap up an annual report for the Alabama Association of RC&D's, picked up a nice new client this week, took a trip to the Black Belt to work on an Antique Trail along Highway 14--a three-day festival in the fall that I'll be developing a website for. To many irons in the fire....

Here's the Greene County Courthouse in downtown, Eutaw, Alabama. I do find the Veterans monuments in each county interesting--I consider the one in my home county of Marengo to be one of the better ones I've seen so far in my travels--but I may be a bit prejudiced. The courthouse is in disrepair and surely needs some love. More photos to come.

Well, I don't normally do this sort of thing, but I've been reviewing applications for National Scenic Byway Designation over the past week + and just really wanted to share the itinerary that my friend Colette Boehm at the Gulf Coast Convention and Visitor's Bureau has put together to highlight the great experiences someone can have on a trip to Alabama's Coastal Connection.

There are many ways to enjoy Alabama's Coastal Connection, but none offers more scenic views than our Connecting with Nature itinerary. Take two days and experience the beauty and variety of the natural assets of Alabama's Gulf Coast and the interpretive facilities that help visitors understand their connection. Spring and fall are the best times of year to enjoy this itinerary, and completion times will vary depending upon the degree of interest in hiking and/or biking along the variety of trails.

Start: Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary

After beginning your drive along the rural farmlands of Mobile County and by the scenic docks of Bayou La Batre, continue across the Dauphin Island bridge onto the island. Arriving at the Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary, you'll find parking and picnic areas and interpretive signage describing the habitats and birds to be found here, and along the Alabama Coastal Birding Trail, on which the sanctuary is a stop. Explore the 1000-foot handicap accessible boardwalk from the parking lot to "Gaillard Lake" or the raised walkway through the Tupelo swamp. The sanctuary encompasses more than a mile of trails through a variety of intact habitats including preserved maritime forest.

One of the monthly newsletters I work on: The Alabama Sierran. I did the first newsletter for the Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club in January 2006 and have done one each month since then. This is an 8 page tabloid-size newsletter printed on recycled newsprint. You can download the full newsletter at alabama.sierraclub.org. In addition to working on this newsletter, I just finished an online newsletter for Birmingham, Alabama based CGH Insurance Group (www.cghinsurance.com/newsletter). And, perhaps most fun right now, I'm working on a website on tourism--particularly historical and ecological--in Bibb County, Alabama. I'm developing it almost entirely in Movable Type (using a little Dreamweaver to help me handle the CSS stylesheets). Pretty interesting stuff. Not that far along yet, but I've built the shell: www.bibbtourism.com. Other than that, just the usual blog updates at Your Town Alabama and Alabama's Front Porches.

Well, my intent is to add these photos as a slideshow so they'll be visible within the blog page, but, for some reason, Slideshow Pro's upgrade to their Lightroom plugin isn't really working in the way that it did before. For now, I'm just creating a completely separate page for the slideshow.

These photos are some of the photos I took on a trip to Selma, Gees Bend and Camden (and all points between). There are some interesting photos...I'll wind up using many of these photos on the www.alababmafrontporches.com website.

http://www.joewatts.com/geesbend/

Well, it looks like I have gotten a few blogs up and running. Of course, there's this blog: Getting to Know Joe (I've been putting things out on this blog since I think around Thanksgiving 2007). Then, there's the Your Town Alabama blog: mostly, that blog's about grant opportunities around Alabama, information for the planning community, news about tourism and byways and the like. I really enjoy doing that blog--it gets pretty decent readership, too. And the newest blog is all about rural southwest Alabama called Alabama's Front Porches (where I grew up). It is particularly targeted towards attracting tourists to the area, so I'll be highlighting festivals, fun, food and all those types of things along the way. There will, hopefully, be a mix between personal writings about the things to do while in my neck of the woods along with the more standard press release type information. There's not a lot of information on the blog right now, but I plan to update it regularly, so keep an eye on it!

It has been a busy week. Monday was filled with the usual Monday busywork, along with catching up  on several projects that are ongoing. Plus, I spent some of Monday on last minute details for the workshop we held at the Barber Motorsports Museum. Yesterday was taken up with a full day of a somewhat participatory workshop on Tourism-oriented wayshowing (helping travelers find their way to the places that they are looking for). It was a good workshop and we brought down a couple of people from the America's Byways Resource Center in Duluth, Minnesota. 40 people attended the workshop from around the state. We hope to have more.

Just wrapped up a newsletter for CGH Insurance Group (The CGH Insider). It is an online only newsletter. This marked the 53rd issue of the newsletter I've completed. For this issue, I went back and compiled the interviews I've done over the years--pretty standard stuff, but still... www.cghinsurance.com/newsletter/. I've also made a few corrections to the Tombigbee RC&D Council's website: www.tombigbeercd.com--more to come on that website in the next couple of weeks.

I'm about to finish my monthly newsletter for the Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club (The Alabama Sierran). I'll be sending it to the printer tomorrow. I finished a postcard for Alzheimer's of Central Alabama last week, but, since I don't have anything else to post today, thought I'd toss it out here--very nice photos of some Alzheimer's patients--not taken by me... Now, back to working on the Alzheimer's art calendar.

This week is dedicated to wrapping up the remaining newsletters for August and the Alzheimer's calendar. Next week is all about Alabama tourism: a major redo of the Alabama Scenic Byways website (www.alabamabyways.org) along with some substantial work on a website for Bibb County and updates for the Alabama Front Porches website: www.alabamafrontporches.com.

Wow! Last week was about the most hectic I've had in a while. Monday and Tuesday started off normally, I guess. Finished up a newsletter for the Sierra Club and got a good bit done on a website for a new client, Aztec Construction. Oh, and I finished a postcard for the Alzheimer's of Central Alabama's summer fundraiser, Hot Diamonds in the Summer.

Then, Wednesday, I headed to Gadsden, Alabama for a final meeting with the Lookout Mountain Parkway Association on a corridor management plan we've been developing over the past 12 months or so. Got some good press on this one--including a nice long article in the Gadsden Times and some coverage--thankfully not including me--on local Jacksonville, Alabama channel 24. Channel 24 TV video: http://www.tv24.tv/news/?newsID=4959#. Looks like the Gadsden Times really believes in the project, as they ran a Sunday editorial on the Lookout Mountain Parkway.

On the way back from Gadsden, we had a flat tire--I didn't know if I'd remember how to change a tire. I doubt I've done it since I was forced to learn how in high school--a teacher thought that everyone should know how. I was successful, however.

We made it back to Birmingham around 3 p.m. I hurried home, packed a bag and hustled away to Camp McDowell for the 2.5 day Your Town Alabama workshop (see the photos below). As luck would have it, I left all my hanging clothes hanging in our guest bedroom, so I stopped in Jasper to buy new shirts--at the tractor supply store because they had a sign for Carhartt clothes. Good deals on 4 shirts. I took about 450 photos over the course of 2 days.

To cap off a busy week of being in front of people, I got a copy of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System's quarterly newsletter, ACTION, that has an article I wrote on scenic byways. I've copied the article and added it to my Your Town Alabama blog.