The Unclaimed Baggage Centre in Scottsboro, Alabama was such an unusual place to stop off at! Apparently, when luggage is left on planes, trains or automobiles, if it is not claimed, the airlines give it to the Unclaimed Baggage Centre, who sell it off at a fraction of the price.
I was excited to go and find some bargains, dreaming of emerging decked out in designer gear for the price of a Taco Bell.
The place was massive and there was everything you can imagine – clothes, sunglasses, books, skis, snowboards, surfboards, and random stuff. Apparently some of the weirdest things they have had over the years include moose antlers and a full suit of armour?! Don’t you just hate it when you lose your moose antlers? 😉
But when I got there I didn’t like it. It made me feel uncomfortable. Instead of seeing bargains, all I could think of was the people who had lost these items, and how gutted they would be.
There was a long row of I-pads, and can you imagine how gutted you would be if you lost your brand new I-pad on a plane? Once an airline lost my bag for a day and I was absolutely gutted to be parted with my stuff. Luckily they reunited me with my bag, but these people were not as lucky, and I felt uneasy to be profiting from that situation. Plus, it was more expensive that I had expected 😉 I had anticipated some real bargains, eg. designer sunglasses for dirt cheap, etc. However clearly someone with a shrewd eye had done the pricing. Expensive or designer items were priced accordingly. You can’t blame em, and it was certainly less than market value, but it wasn’t dirt cheap.
My BF toyed with buying a laptop (which he didn’t really need and couldn’t really afford but was apparently much cheaper than in the UK) but he decided not to in the end, mainly as if he changed his mind, or if it didn’t work it would be expensive to return it from the UK! So we left empty handed.
We were glad we had paid it a visit, purely as it is such a different bizarre place to go! We enjoyed some uninspiring dinner in Scottsboro and then began the drive to Birmingham AL.
We often saw warning signs for deer on the roads through Tennessee and Alabama. I tended to take them with a pinch of salt as I never saw any deer, but it kept me on my toes when I saw a massive blood stain on the road, presumably from a previous incident. Hitting a deer would clearly do some serious damage to the car, the deer, and your psyche. Thankfully our drive was deer free and we reached Birmingham safely.
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