April Louisiana Road Trip.....Day 10

Wednesday morning started early for us.  The lame breakfast at the motel lobby was OJ, Coffee, Bagels and/or Yogurt.  I opted for the OJ and Yogurt back in our room.

Eating the yogurt I noticed that it was from a dairy/plant in Upstate New York.......

What?  Folks in Tennessee can't find a closer dairy to obtain their yogurt from?!
Whatever happened to supporting your local economy?

 After breakfast we took a short dip in the motel pool.  The thing was very small for a pool but gigantic if it were a hot tub. lol
No one else was around so we had it to ourselves so it was ok.

The last 2 days hadn't felt very vacation like.....except for our visit with the Clamco clan.
This was because Daughter put an offer on the house on Monday so we were under the gun to get the earnest money, if the offer was accepted, into the hands of the realtor within 24 hours after said offer was accepted.  Since we were on the road and couldn't do some banking stuff remotely, we made numerous calls to both our banks to see how to arrange an EFT of the cash into Daughter's account.  Since we had to do this in person at home there wasn't much else we could do until the deal got the green light(and we had no clue how long THAT was going to take)and we got home so we decided to take 2 or 3 days to get home and make this leg of the trip more relaxing.

We packed up the car and headed out for a day of sightseeing before we left Chattanooga.

We didn't go to Raccoon Mountain, though the go karts WERE tempting......

Instead we went to Lookout Mountain for the day.

Getting up there was a bit harder than we thought, since we approached the narrow windy road leading up to the summit from the wrong direction to make the hairpin turn.  So we came back at it the opposite direction.
And once we got up the mountain we found that the town was repaving most of the main roads that day, which made it tricky trying to get close to Point Park.

But I turned on my best Southern accent and charmed a couple of road crew workers into "moving y'alls little old cones over a tad so we could squeeze on by".
It helps that folks in general are just a bit more friendly down here too.
So we got close enough to park within walking distance.

There are lots of things to see on Lookout Mountain.....Ruby Falls(which is in a cave so NOT on my list as I don't do caves), Rock City(too much walking and climbing over rocks), as well as the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway(we just ran out of time for that one).

Hubs walking by the sign for Rock city and Ruby Falls.

We went into the building next to the park but first, I had Hubs take a picture of my "pretending to fire a cannon".

Me and my big gun....hehehehe

In that building they had a "show" and a gift shop.  The person manning the shop talked us out of $8 each to see a very lame diorama with film presentation.  Back in the day(1950's)this was cutting edge technology to bring the Battle of Chattanooga to life.
In 2014, not so much.

After sitting through that you walked through a couple of rooms of displays of artifacts and some mannequins dressed in circa 1863 military garb.....

Yawn....
Then you were deposited back into the gift shop.
I did rather like the title of the cookbook on the left.....

"Sherman Didn't Burn Our Recipes"

A framed poster of Confederate Generals....just the thing for your PA home.....lolz

 

This display of children's costumes got my hackles up.  An Abe Lincoln costume right next to a Confederate soldiers outfit?!?
Sir, this is unacceptable!  Especially in Tennessee.....

We walked over to the Point Park entrance.

Don't you love the asphalt equipment and orange cones in my shot?

Here's another one with out the road crew equipment.....

Point Park is the National Park Service run Park at the summit of Lookout Mountain.

We walked over to get a shot of the river and valley below.....

In  this shot you can see the Craven's House(where the Confederate headquarters was until the Yankee dogs took the summit) and the Iowa Monument that was erected after the war to commemorate all the many Iowa troop regiments  that fought in the Battle of Chattanooga.
Craven's House marks the midway point between the summit and the river.

 This is about as close as I dared get to the edge.  It's a long way down!

And I spied another fellow visitor to the park that day.....

Here I am looking all emotional and somber, reflecting on the past....or maybe Hubs was telling a really bad nerdy joke here and I couldn't help but grimace.....I don't remember which.

Someone offered to take our picture together......I saw this and realized we wore "matching outfits" that day.  Gawd, we are turning into an old married couple.  lolz

Then we did some artsy and/or goofy shots.....

That's a really big gun!

                                       
 
And a shot of Hubs with the cannon.

The view here was amazing......on  a clear day you can about see 3 states.

Next it was into the Federal Park's gift shop and gallery next to the park to browse the books and trinkets.....

And view the mural painting of the "Battle Above the Clouds".....

Then it was time to hit the road and leave Chattanooga.

We made a stop for lunch in a tiny town called Athens, Tennessee, as we headed back northeast.
Why stop here?
Well it was off the beaten path and I had read about it somewhere.

This was Small's Cajun Man Drive-In.....

They are suppose to have the best burgers in southeast TN........

All I can say is there are very fresh and are about as big as your plate.
And the folks are right friendly there.

When they found out we were from Pennsylvania they all kept asking us why we were here. lolz

I said I was there for the fried pies, which they are also known for but only have when the lady who makes them feels like coming in and doing so(and that wasn't the day we were there). *sad face*

 

They also had a good bbq pork sandwich with coleslaw on it, but the coleslaw was very interesting and nothing like any coleslaw I have ever had.  The sauce on it tasted like mustard and pickle juice.  It complimented the pulled pork but I don't think I'd want to be eating it straight.  8-P

A selfie with the Small's sign in the distance.  Love the hair in my mouth.....

I got a cup of local Mayfield PEACH ICE CREAM to go.
Mmmmmm!

While we were sitting in the car getting ready to leave Hubs cell phone rang.
It was our Daughter telling us the bank accepted her offer on the foreclosed property.
And the clock was ticking now on getting the earnest money to them within 24 hours or lose the deal.

So our vacation turned back into a "we have to get home as soon as possible trip so we can EFT the cash to them".
Ugh.

So that was the end of our fun basically.
Since we were now about 8-9 hours from home, Hubs decided we should drive straight through from here to home instead of stopping another night along the way.

The rest of the day/night was driving with breaks for potty time, gas and coffee.

We saw this bus somewhere in VA.......I got a chuckle out of their company name.....lolz

Another sign from the road further up into Virginia.....

About Buchanan, VA, where we stopped for gas night fell.  My last photo is of the XM radio in the car......

Yes, we listened to some opera that evening.
But by 10pm we switched to a stand-up comedy channel to keep Hubs awake. lolz
We got home around midnight very tired.
And that ended our road trip in April.

Lots of fun and I am still going through all the bills/receipts adding up everything we spent.
I'd say it was a fairly frugal adventure as road trips go.....and we had a very good time.
It's so fun to me to get out on the road and travel and getting to meet online friends is also amazing!

Sluggy

April Louisiana Road Trip.....Day 9....A Boring Day of Driving

Tuesday morning, after I took a quick dip in the pool and we had our free breakfast, we hit the road heading north.

First a word about breakfast.  We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express here in Fairhope Alabama.  It was the most expensive room we took on this trip but the breakfast was superb.

Ok, not Eggs Benedict superb but for a continental "included with the room cost" Breakfast it was great!  Lots of options, everything was either hot or cold(depending on what it was suppose to be)and the cinnamon rolls......let me just wax poetic for a bit about their cinnamon rolls.
O.M.G.

I tried desperately to figure out how to fit a tray of these into my purse but to no avail....sigh
These were the best cinnamon rolls I've ever tasted in my 55 years on this planet.
Not too sweet, not too dry and a butt load of cinnamon.  I am drooling just thinking about them.

So we hit the road, but not before stopping in at the Rite-Aid in Fairhope because I had +Ups and coupons expiring that day so I forced Hubs to go there. ;-)

The applesauce was free after +Ups and the dish soap was .50¢ a bottle after rain check and coupons.

Then we hit the highway until we came to Spanish Fort about 11 miles away. lol
Saw a World Market and had to check it out.

More "Slap Ya Mama" products......

And it was difficult but I resisted buying this Chocolate Bacon Caramel Corn.....

And this location had the Downton Abbey teas but at $11.99 a small tin, I left them on the shelf....

The bulk of the day was spent driving through Alabama.  I never realized how long that state was.

Up past Bay Minette and then onto I-65 and up to Montgomery and then onward to Birmingham, then east on I-59 to Chattanooga TN.

Yet another Casino we passed in Alabama that I didn't stop at.
Ssssh, don't tell Sonya Ann.....

We did stop at this touristy trap along the interstate however.

Priester's has been selling pecans since 1935, like the sign says.
We hit the free tasting samples and I bought some bags of pecan pieces for cheap....they'll be great in pies or pecan sandies.
The whole nuts were outrageously priced so I passed on those.

I did see these awesome decorative measuring scoops with chickens on them and thought of you Linda. 
But at $40(plus tax)they stayed in the store. lolz

Not much scenery along this looooong stretch of interstate driving, except for a Hyundai plant.

The most exciting thing along this route was this sign for Selma.  Yes, this is boring when a highway sign is the most exciting thing to look at and post about.
We didn't go to Selma this trip.


I may have dozed off in the car for awhile....I blame it on cinnamon rolls. ;-)
We ate so much breakfast(and with all those free pecan samples at Priester's)we didn't even stop for lunch anywhere.

We got into Chattanooga around 8 and it was after dark.  It took all day to drive from the bottom to the top of Alabama and then into Tennessee.

We found a motel room right off the interstate and by the time we unloaded our bags and settled into the room it was 9pm.
Seeing as most of the food options near the motel for dinner were fast food, we ended up at Waffle House which was one of the few places nearby that was still open and not burgers.  At that hour a little light "breakfast for dinner" hit the spot.
Then back to the room for some shut eye.

I do hate long driving days but now it was behind us and we could do some fun stuff on Day 10 and 11 before getting home on Day 12....or so I thought.

Sluggy