"So bring a flashlight, bring a stroller, and bring a curiosity for local history!" That's the advice in the city's event listing for the Albertville Museum's Spirit Tours. The first tour is tonight, Saturday, October 3, at 6 p.m.
The museum at 101 W. Main Street normally keeps weekday hours. It's open Tuesday through Friday from 9 to 11 a.m. and noon to 4 p.m. Even so, the one event on Albertville's October calendar that repeats every weekend belongs to the museum, and it starts at 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Sand Mountain Park has the big ticket concert and the festival, and each of those takes up a single date. The museum takes all four Saturday evenings. The rest of the month's planning works around that schedule.
Four Saturdays, Four Different Routes
The Spirit Tours are free, open to all ages, led by volunteers and about an hour long. You're welcome to leave early. The Sand Mountain Reporter's fall preview mentions that the walking tours require you to walk and stand the whole time. Strollers are welcome.
Each week has a different format, so a family can come to all four without repeating one:
- October 3, east end of downtown. Meet at the museum, walk the east side of the downtown blocks and come back to the museum. The city describes it as local history "with a few spooky tales mixed in."
- October 10, Memory Hill Cemetery. This tour meets at the cemetery, not at the museum. Parking is along Eunice Street.
- October 17, inside the museum. This one is a seated slideshow with photos and stories, and there's no walking.
- October 24, west end of downtown. Meet at the museum again, then head out the opposite direction from the first week.
The third week works well for anyone who can't do an hour on their feet, and that includes grandparents. The second week means a different parking plan. Only the first and last tours actually walk through the downtown storefronts. Because those two cover opposite ends, you'd need to go both weeks to see the whole district.
October 17 Is the Day to Spend Downtown
Of the four Saturdays, October 17 has the most going on downtown. The museum is hosting two free programs that day, four hours apart.
At 2 p.m., Joey Brackner will present "Slinging Mud," a talk about Alabama's traditional pottery makers and their stories. Brackner is a former Alabama state folklorist and a former director of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. He wrote Alabama Folk Pottery and Of Mules and Mud, and he hosted the PBS series Journey Proud. Admission is free.
At 6 p.m., the Spirit Tour slideshow starts in the same building.
That leaves you a free afternoon in between. Downtown is small enough to fill it on foot, and the restaurants below are all within a few blocks of the museum.
One exhibit has its own schedule. "Uniforms Through the Years: 100 Years of the Aggie Band!" shows Albertville High School band uniforms from different eras. It's up through the end of October during regular museum hours, which means Tuesday through Friday. If you have a band alum in the family who wants to see their old uniform, a weekday lunch break is the surest time to go, and the exhibit closes before November.
Where Downtown Is Still Open Around 6 P.M.
The tours start just as some downtown businesses are closing, so pick your dinner spot with that in mind.
Stories on Broad, at 126 N. Broad St., is the newest business on the block. It's an independent bookstore and coffee shop that opened earlier this year in the storefront where Shades of Pemberly used to be. The shop is owned by Ashley Stillman and her sister-in-law, Alex McIntire. McIntire told the Sand Mountain Reporter that they've sold more coffee than they expected. Their drinks include The Gatsby, made with white chocolate, cinnamon and two shots of espresso. There's also a vanilla-lavender drink named Shades of Pemberly after the bookstore that came before them. On some weekends they sell baked goods. A WAFF feature in March said some of those come from And Wonderfully Made. The shop is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., so it closes right as the tour group gathers. Plan to get your coffee before the tour.
For dinner, most of the options are on East Main, a short walk from the museum:
- Local Joe's BBQ, Catering & Market, 102 E. Main St. Its website lists Saturday hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., so you have time to eat after a tour ends around 7.
- Mater's Pizza & Pasta Emporium, 108 E. Main St. A Marshall County tourism listing from 2023 shows Saturday hours of 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Call ahead to confirm.
- El Sol King Pollo, 113 E. Main St. Its own notice says it closes at 7:30 p.m. on Saturdays, which makes it a better fit for an early dinner before the tour.
- Bootleggers Italian Cookhouse, 119 E. Main St. The state tourism listing shows 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays. The restaurant's own site doesn't post hours, so check before you go.
- Gordo's Way, 212 E. Main St. Its ordering site lists Saturday hours of 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., the latest of the group.
For Saturday breakfast instead, an older Chamber listing has Albertville Home Bakery at 212 B North Broad St. open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. That listing was posted in 2023, so treat those hours as a starting point.
October 24 Starts Out at Sand Mountain Park
The last Saturday of the tour series is also the one day when both parts of town have something going on, and their schedules don't overlap.
The Sand Mountain Park Fall Festival runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 109 Solitude Ave. The same hours and the same park are listed for the first-ever Sand Mountain Car Show, and the park's graphic for the car show is labeled as part of the Fall Festival. All makes and models are welcome, including cars, trucks, classic and muscle cars, imports, Jeeps and motorcycles. Entries compete in several categories for prizes, and there will be food trucks and local vendors.
The car show wraps up at 2 p.m. and the west-end Spirit Tour starts at 6. That gives you four hours to get home, rest up and get downtown before the final walk of the series. If you do both, you'll see two parts of Albertville that are on the same October calendar but aren't yet connected for anyone on foot.
The park's other big October date is a Friday. Dwight Yoakam plays Sand Mountain Amphitheater at 1325 SMPA Blvd. on October 16 at 7 p.m., with Coleman Jennings opening. The next afternoon is Brackner's talk downtown. If you go to both, that's a concert Friday night and a folk-pottery talk Saturday afternoon.
The Trail That Would Link the Two
The city has a plan to connect the park and downtown. In August, the Albertville City Council approved a master plan agreement with the engineering firm Goodwyn Mills Cawood to design the Drum Creek Greenway. It's a future 11-mile trail corridor paired with restoration work on East Fork Drum Creek. Because the design was coordinated with the city's ongoing Drum Creek-Short Creek Watershed Management Plan, the city avoided duplicate fieldwork and saved about 15 percent, according to the city's announcement.
The first two phases would connect the places in this post. Phase 1 is a 1.7-mile segment ending at Sand Mountain Park & Amphitheater. Phase 2 is 1.5 miles that would continue into downtown and link Albertville High School, elementary campuses, the planned public library and the Center on Broad senior center. A longer plan would add 9.5 miles north along Short Creek toward Lake Guntersville State Park.
"That walkability and connectivity I think just makes for a stronger community," City Council President Nathan Broadhurst said in the city's announcement, which links to WAFF's full story.
For now, the greenway is still a design. The city says that once the master plan is complete, it will start applying for state and federal grants next summer to help pay for construction. Public workshops on trail features and amenities will be announced later this year. The announcement doesn't give a construction start date. This October, getting from the car show to the Spirit Tour still means driving and parking near 101 W. Main Street before 6 p.m.
If the greenway workshops get you thinking about walking distance between home and downtown, or how close you'd like to be to Sand Mountain Park, the team at Tressie Young is happy to talk through Albertville and the rest of Northeast Alabama with you over coffee. Start Your Property Search whenever it suits you, and we'll hope to see you on Broad Street one of these Saturday nights.
