Eating Your Way down this Alabama Trail

Too often in our small towns we try to do everything ourselves, rather than reaching out and trying to do things on a regional basis. I’ve seen so many regional efforts allow individual towns to leverage themselves so much more than what they could do by themselves. I saw an example of this in Eufaula, AL when I stopped there on a refueling stop coming back from Key West.

Eufaula, AL (population 13,908) sits pristinely along Lake Eufaula, built in 1963 by the Army Corps of Engineers. It is one of my top 100 agurbs® and I’ve used it several times in my talks as an example of how a town can determine their own direction. In the case of Eufaula they’ve leveraged their natural resources tremendously, building upon the lake and wildlife. The town is a major bird watching paradise, the fastest growing spectator sport in the USA.

The first time that I used them as an example I was corrected on how to pronounce the town. I learned that it is pronounced “you-fall-uh”, with a very long a-a-a- in the faul.

But back to my original theme. Alabama has produced a brochure of 100 dishes to eat in Alabama before you die. I learned where to eat crawfish pie, JoJo potatoes, L. A. (Lower Alabama) caviar, fried rabbit, smoked lettuce salad and black-eyed pea cake & trout. It is another great example of how working together can enhance tourism and sales for everyone.