Connie Pearson has always enjoyed travel across her native Alabama, during her time as a missionary and as a writer and author. Now she’s sharing that love with fellow travelers in a book, “100 Things to Do in Huntsville and North Alabama Before You Die.”
The book covers a lot of ground — food and drink, music and entertainment, sports and recreation, culture and history, shopping and fashion, all available in northern Alabama. Pearson, a freelance writer and blogger, thought the information would be helpful as many are ready to venture out but are still nervous about extended travel after COVID-19. 
“I wrote the book primarily during 2021 as a coming-out-of-the-pandemic project,” Pearson explained. “After spending seven years traveling around the country in my role as a travel writer — primarily in the Southeast — seeing all that other states had to offer, I realized North Alabama had its own amazing attractions, features, geography, food and people that could rank with any I’d experienced in other places.”
The book has something for nearly everyone with featured attractions geared to all ages.
While it might be tempting to assume living in one area for many years equals automatically knowing the best places to visit, Pearson said that isn’t necessarily true.
“Even though I have lived in North Alabama for at least 50 years of my life,” Pearson explained, “there were many of the ‘100 things’ that I had never visited or even knew about until I started researching. So North Alabama folks can learn something new.”
Many careers
A lifelong Baptist now in her fourth career, Pearson has been a private piano teacher, public school music teacher and missionary before venturing into writing. Her son Matt, campus and teaching pastor at the Church at West Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee, suggested travel writing.
“A couple of years after I retired from the classroom Matt sent me a link to an article about travel writing and said, ‘Mom, you love to travel, and you love to ask questions. I bet you’d like this,’” Pearson recalled. “The idea immediately grabbed my attention, and I started learning everything I could about it.
“[My husband and I] recently returned from a nine-day trip through Louisiana and Mississippi. He was ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ while I did my thing of interviewing, photographing and asking my many questions. My kids call me the ‘Queen of Questions’ … in the nicest way, of course.”
While researching, Pearson was able to eat amazing food and visit attractions she had never heard of, she related. But the best times were when she included various groups of her 15 grandchildren.
Their memorable experiences included “feeding the animals at Harmony Park Safari, spending the day at Spring Valley Beach, watching the artists at Lowe Mill, sharing the story of Helen Keller at her home, letting them take endless photos at Huntsville Botanical Garden, cheering as they tried to match Jesse Owens’ Olympic medal-winning long jump or hearing their exclamations of, ‘Come see this, Grandmomma,’ at the new Cook Museum of Natural Science,” Pearson recalled.
Many hats
“100 Things … ” is Pearson’s second publication, but books are only part of her writing career. She also has a blog, “There Goes Connie,” and contributes to TAB Media through her “Go Taste and See” column.
The Alabama Baptist was woven through Pearson’s life before she became a contributor, she said.
“My dad (Tom Collier) was the executive director of the Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes, and they used to have a weekly page in TAB. My mother (Mildred) was the one who kept up with gifts to the Children’s Home in memory of or in honor of certain people, and that list was published in TAB,” Pearson remembered. “When my husband and I were appointed as missionaries to Ecuador in 2002, TAB included us with the other appointees. My first book, ‘Telling It on the Mountain: 52 Days in the Life of an Improbable Missionary,’ was reviewed in TAB by Dr. Martine Bates Sharp.”
“After several years of travel writing … I pitched the idea to [TAB editor-in-chief] Jennifer Rash, and she loved it,” Pearson recalled.
Because Huntsville is the featured city, originally a rocket was to be on Pearson’s new book cover. However, she convinced the publisher “to use a photo of the mosaic in front of FBC Huntsville. It is a highly recognizable sight in Huntsville, but it also puts Jesus at the top and center of my book,” she said.
“I’m glad that I’m a writer now, because I have so much more life experience than I would have had if I’d jumped to being a full-time writer at an earlier stage.”
To find out more about Pearson and obtain an autographed copy of the book with a list of bonus suggestions, go to ThereGoesConnie.com and click on “Books.”
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