Ssshhhh! As far as I'm concerned it's one of the best-kept secrets. And yeah, I've lived in NY, and elsewhere. AL is the place.
No kidding... My fiancee lives in Huntsville, and I am trying like mad to get a job there rather than having her move here (I live in Arkansas, which is not too bad, but not as nice as 'Bama).
Y'all cain't hide from me. I got an old girl friend stashed in Tuscaloosa, drive through Alabama about once every other year or less. And I know about the Alabama Hills and Signal Mountain, and I've heard about the little hidden valleys and hollers up in the mountains with their relict Pleistocene hardwood forests -- sugar maple, northern ash, that kind of thing. Been down to Bayou LaBatre, too, and I'll certify that it's just like Louisiana down there, except for the people. But it's coastal marsh, okay, and you can't tell it from St. Bernard Parish. Same shrimp boats, same crewboats, same offshore production platforms, same tidal channels and sawgrass. I went on vacation seven years ago, having just worn myself out traveling back and forth to a jackup out in Eugene Island ......and pulled into Dauphin Island marina aboard the ferry from the other side of Mobile Bay, and damn if that ferry didn't pull up right next to a big offshore crewboat that was a sister to, and identical in every respect but her name to, the crewboat I'd been riding on and off for five months out of Morgan City. Drove 450 miles to get away from work and the office, and kerplunk, landed right back in the middle of an oil-patch operating base.
Been to Orange Beach, too, and it's just like Fort Walton Beach. Got a little bit of a bunch of things going --- and that's not counting the kudzu.