Home from college roadtrip

A year ago, the college coed was already home for the summer since every US campus went fully online after spring break 2020 due to the pandemic. This year, she got to finish out her sophomore year spring semester, which had me flying to South Carolina to be her ridin' shotgun buddy for the drive to get her car to Texas for the summer. I hadn't been on a plane in almost fifteen months, since the covid hit full force. And after being in lockdown, I'll admit it felt kinda freaky to be surrounded by all those people in masks at the airport. Not to mention the tight confines of the plane. The flight attendants made it very clear that any covid deniers and mask refusers would feel their wrath for non-compliance.

For the sake of my middle-aged back, the coed and her friends had already moved all of her apartment stuff into a storage unit. So I got to hang out and have lunch with them when I arrived at Clemson, celebrating the end of final exams as well as the coed pulling down another 4.0 semester. The azaleas and magnolias were in bloom everywhere. That's what I miss about living in the Texas hill country where we deal with drought, all of that beautiful greenery thanks to the wet weather they get in places like Clemson.

 

 

We rolled out of bed before sunrise Friday morning and hit the road to Texas. Since I rode shotgun for the first eight hours of the trip, I got to do things like snap blurry pics of signs along the interstate. What, exactly, is a Foosackly? For those of you like me who were intrigued yet ignorant, Foosackly's is a chain of chicken restaurants in coastal Alabama and northwest Florida. And now you know.

The coed is our family buffet sleuth. Sure enough, she found a real hidden gem off the beaten path in Stockton, Alabama, at The Stagecoach Cafe where we stopped for lunch. It was good old down home country cooking just like my granny used to whip up for us. What surprised us was that the scratch-made desserts were just as delicious as the savory buffet fixin's. We were immediately welcomed and enjoyed chatting with the sweet folks working there, with their 'bama accents and genuine southern hospitality.

I was a bit leery when we first pulled up and saw this dude (above) scratching around adjacent to the parking lot. It was a sure sign we were in the country. And whether or not his chicken buddies were served up crispy fried on our plates, we found it rather humorous.

Thankfully, our drive was mostly traffic and drama free, though we did have to pass through a bit of rain along the way. When we rolled into our driveway yesterday, the coed announced that she's pretty sure the worst drivers are here in Texas. Unfortunately, I'd have to agree with that assessment!