One Lazy Day Then Talledega and a Birthday Dinner

Wednesday was just a day for a little down time - finally! We did laundry, played games, and read books. I must say though that the highlight of the day was meeting some dear family friends at a Cracker Barrel for lunch. We love hanging out and visiting with the Watsons. It's like no time has past since we got together last, and that is so nice. We also come away with the first of our Cracker Barrel souvenirs - a weasel that chases a ball, some candy sticks and a dress for Kassidy. (There were other gifts obtained at later visits too - Grammy loves to spoil her kids!)


The next day we decided to check out the racetrack and International Motorsports Hall of Fame at Talladega. (We had passed it the day before on the way to lunch, and it peaked more than a few guys' interest.) There were tons of race cars to check out - old, new, innovative, from famous drivers - pictures and bios of their Hall of Fame inductees, plus a tour of parts of the racetrack. I think Jason, dad, Uncle Steve, Aunt Lynda and Megan just ate it up. I made everyone pick their favorite race car to have their picture with. Some picked by their favorite driver, or because it was pretty, or because it matched their outfit (okay, that was just me!), or because it was pink (yep, that was Kassidy). We even got to take our picture in the winners circle.
I have to admit though that the most memorable part of the day came from our adventure to have dinner. It was my mom's birthday and she said before we even got to Alabama that she wanted to have a catfish dinner to celebrate. Uncle Steve had a recommendation from a gal at work that told us that we just had to go to Red's Catfish. So that is where we went. We left at 5:00ish and knew we would have a little drive ahead of us, but no problem, right, we are going for the best catfish in the area. We were looking for highway number something or another and just could not seem to find it. We had driven for more than an hour when we decided we must have missed it and began looking for a place to ask for directions. Wouldn't you know it, all the gas stations were closed. We eventually turned around and drove 20 or so minutes back to a station we remembered was open. Uncle Steve and Dad went inside. They came back out about 10 minutes later with a hand drawn map to our destination! Turned out we had to take another highway to get to the highway we were looking for - oops. So 45 minutes after that we finally arrived at the place. In our car we tried to make the best of our many hours of driving time by playing Alabama Bingo. You know looking for things that are typical to that state. We were able to find a tire swing, a gazebo, a porch swing, cattle, a car on blocks, several Baptist churches, and a three legged dog - no joke! It helped to pass the time and was driving Tyler crazy, so it was even more fun! We were hoping that the place wasn't going to be closed when we got there, but luckily we arrived at 7:15 and they closed at 8:00. But the trouble getting there turned out to be just the start of the problems. They promptly informed us that they had no bathrooms and the a/c was out - something about a well pump not working. Are you kidding me! We just drove for over two hours with no bathroom breaks and now that we are here their restrooms are out. Needless to say we were not getting back in the car to try to drive another million miles to somewhere we didn't know again, so we just drank very little of the drinks we ordered and ate our catfish dinners very quickly. It was delicious (super yummy hushpuppies) and it lived up to their reputation. We think it is a riot now, but that night we couldn't wait to get back to some gas station somewhere and go to the restroom, oh yeah, and get something to drink because we were thirsty since we didn't drink anything at dinner. Let's just say we won't be forgetting this birthday anytime soon!