Lived in Alabama for 7 years and loved it. Beautiful country and mostly good Southern people. Wouldn't ever want to leave Texas again, but if I did Alabama wouldn't be a bad place to end up

New to the board, but I'm an Auburn graduate and I attended A&M as well. I think many of you would be pleasantly surprised by many areas of Alabama. I grew up and live in the Birmingham area. South of Birmingham ("over the mountain") is an extremely nice place to live and work. Our beaches are award-winning. The northern part of the state is the beginning of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountain ranges. There are some absolutely awful areas outside of the large cities, and anything between I-20/50 and I-65 (SW Alabama) is considered one of the poorest areas of the country. I think one poster was correct when he compared rural Alabama to rural east Texas.

I once got caught in the middle of a guy getting busted on a high speed(or could have been slow or medium) chase while driving through Selma at about 3am. I was sitting at a stop light when all of a sudden I'm surrounded by flashing lights and police running around with guns drawn.