Sometimes You See the Strangest Things

I love finding quirky things when I travel. Route 66 through Oklahoma was a treasure trove of quirk. In fact, the travel guide we followed for those two trips included “big alerts” for things like giant pop bottles or the worlds tallest totem pole made out of concrete. Of course we stopped to see everybody one. Today we found two pretty quirky sites right here in southern Alabama: Bamahenge and The Lady of the Lake.  Along with these two “sculptures” were assorted dinosaurs, knights in the woods, spiders and a fountain topped by King Neptune.

Here’s a little background information. George W. Barber JR. is considered to be one of the wealthiest men in Alabama. He was the heir to Barber Dairy which he sold in 1998. He was a race car driver and a car enthusiast. When he sold the dairy and retired he began to build the worlds largest collection of motorcycles which eventually became a museum in Birmingham. He also built the Birmingham Motorsports Park, a racetrack dedicated to developing race car drivers.  At his museum and race park he also began to collect strange sculptures ( www.barbermuseum.org) . Around 2008 Mr. Barber began to build the Barber Marina south of Elberta, AL, on the shore of Wolf Bay.  For years Ken and I would see this giant metal building when we would take our annual dolphin tour. About 4 years ago the name went up on the side of the building.  It was the warehouse for Barber Marina. Mr. Barber expanded his strange sculpture collection on and around the marina. According to    https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/36349 the  sculptor Mark Cline received a request from Mr. Barber for a replica of Stonehenge to be built on his property. The resulting sculpture  was christened Bamahenge. Having been to the real Stonehenge I can say it’s a nice replica but it doesn’t replace the real thing. However, it was a peaceful spot in the middle of the piney Bama Woods.


A few years later Mr. Barber’s assistant called Cline and said that Mr. Barber wanted a 50 foot sculpture of a lady. Not the entire lady, just her head and knees. And he wanted her to float. Cone puzzled over this but finally settled on building her core out of foam and covered her in fiberglass. Her face was modeled after Sara Evans and Catherine Zeta-Jones. When she was complete Mr. Barber decided to install his Lady of the Lake in his newly completed Marina basin. She is visited by dolphin boats and curious folks like me.


We left Barber’s and drove to Foley where we ate lunch at Stacey’s Rexall Drugs. This is a 1927 drugstore complete with an authentic soda fountain. We had sandwiches but did not partake of the ice cream.  It looked delicious though and was served in old fashioned ice cream dishes.

We ended our day with a quick shopping trip to The Orange Beach store and Matt’s Ice Cream. Dinner followed dessert and consisted of my delicious shrimp creole made with our favorite  Lartigues steamed shrimp.

This has been an odd week for us with crummy weather, bad restaurant meals, a lackluster dolphin cruise and Ken having a terrible cold. I think we were both grateful for today and have our fingers crossed for one last wonderful day at the beach tomorrow.