As long as I've been in the tourism business, 30 years, people who come to the state say one thing a great deal, 'I had no idea Alabama was such a beautiful state,'

We know a lot of people have put their Labor Day plans on hold.

There is the misperception that all of coastal Alabama suffered the same type of damage that impacted Mississippi, and that's not the case,

For the most part, these stories are told with brutal honesty and I think tourists from outside the South are impressed and surprised at the candor of these exhibits.

I attended last year's festival and was blown away.

This birding tail is one of the reasons the governor and I decided that 2006 would be the year of outdoors Alabama,