After my early Saturday morning plasma donation to get another $80, I drove to mom's house so we could begin our drive from Cary, NC to Atlanta, GA. The Google Maps estimate was about a 6.5 hour drive to the Courtyard hotel in East Atlanta.
We started by ordering a giant club supreme sub at Jersey Mike's in Chapel Hill, just so we didn't have to stop at a restaurant along the way. An hour in, we stopped at a rest area to eat. Mom ate a quarter of it and I ate a half. Cape Cod chips and a few bottles of water. On the way down, I played the 1984 country countdown on XM radio and sent the results to Karin. We also played some Dr. Phil, the focus was on the Gabby Petitto murder. And of course I had a few songs that referenced Georgia queued up. Midnight Train to Georgia, Georgia On My Mind, Why Georgia, and Rainy Night In Georgia.
Our first stop, aside from rest areas, was Alpharetta, which is a very nice suburb northeast of Atlanta.
5 and a half hours to get there. We first stopped at Costco for gas, I think it was $2.62, which was quite the bargain. In downtown Atlanta, it was over $3 bucks in some places. The shopping area we went to was Avalon, a bougie shopping area, similar to Fenton in Cary. They even have Colletta, just like in Fenton; they are the only two locations for this over the top fancy Italian restaurant.
But that's not where we went, instead we visited Branch and Barrel. It was quite crowded, but we nabbed the last two seats at the very end of the bar. I liked the back of the bar with whiskey barrels, it felt like going into an old time pub. A little bit dark, but homey. Bartender was super engaging and friendly. We ordered the B&B cobb salad with grilled steak skewers, jalapeno candied bacon, eggs, avocado, tomatoes, bleu cheese & horseradish ranch. Excellent salad, though it was quite heavy with egg, bacon, bleu, and ranch.
The brisket poutine was excellent, with braised brisket and hand cut fries topped with bleu cheese, diced tomatoes, and green onions. Fried were fresh and super crispy. Juicy, well seasoned brisket too. For a drink I tried a Tropicalia, an amazing local IPA from Athens, GA. Very well balanced, not too fruity, not too hoppy. Great recommendation from the bar.
Right outside the restaurant was a Five Daughters doughnuts, the legendary donut shop based in Nashville. Now we had tried one in northwest Florida, where they had a food truck. But hey, the $5 donuts are well worth it. I had the Orange Quinnamon, sort of a cronut with cinnamon, sugar, and salt with a heavy drizzle of orange glaze on top. So incredibly moist and flaky. I also got a strawberry glazed for later. I mean if you're going to have a donut, make it a good one.
Finally, around 7 or 8 pm, we got the Courtyard in east Atlanta, near Stone Mountain. This was the worst Marriott property either of us had ever stayed at. I'm just going to get all the hotel stuff out of the way right here. Thankfully the room was clean, parking was free, and the gym was well stocked. That's about all I have for positives.
The whole place was undergoing renovations, which made things way tougher. There was no elevator, and our room was on the second floor, which meant lugging luggage up the stairs. And with mom's surgically repaired feet, stairs are not exactly welcome.
We were barely even greeted at the front desk. Considering my mother is a lifetime gold member, that's downright wrong. She's supposed to be thanked for her business, they are supposed to see that she requested the first floor, things like that. This front desk guy did nothing of the sort. Oh and I can assure you, based off the number of cars in the parking lot, this hotel was not fully booked.
It gets worse. They have an ice machine...that doesn't work. No free coffee, let alone no free breakfast. But you can get eggs your way at the in-hotel Starbucks for something like $15. And in the public men's room, there was no toilet paper or paper towels.
OK enough of that, let's go to Sunday. We went to Northpoint Church in Alpharetta, it's where Andy Stanley preaches. It's a very large complex, though of course I've seen larger. But they were having a Field Day in the parking lot for the kids, with bouncing castles, face painting, sno-cones, etc. The service was excellent, the music was not too loud and Andy preached a great service. If I had to live in the Atlanta area, I would definitely go back.
Form there, we drove to Buckhead for lunch. And Buckhead is definitely the bougie section of Atlanta. We went to True Food Kitchen, which has a lot more locations than I knew, we even have one in Raleigh. We started with three lemon blueberry muffins. I think we had 1.5 of them and saved the rest for later. I had the Rancher's hash with over easy eggs (I was not doing the recommended sunny side), roasted sweet potatoes, roasted red peppers, lots of grass-fed steak, white cheddar, avocado, cherry tomatoes, charred onions, charred scallion salsa, and sourdough toast. It tasted really sweet to me at first, but then I realized I was having sweet potatoes. No wonder. But really, there was a lot of meat in it and it was cooked to a perfect medium rare.
And thick sourdough always helps for dipping any remaining sauce at the bottom of the bowl. Mom had the chicken parmesan: air-fried chicken breast, fresh mozzarella, organic DiNapoli tomato sauce over spaghetti squash. That sauce was amazing, light and flavorful. Definite recommend. For a drink, I had one of their refreshers but the beet overwhelmed everything else in it, or maybe I'm just sensitive to beets.
After that, we drove through parts of downtown Atlanta and I made sure to stop by Turner Field, which would have been my torture chamber in the 90s since it was home of the Braves for a long time. Georgia State University uses it now for football. And the area around the stadium feels just dead. I can see why they moved.
We had considered going to Stone Mountain Park, so we drove east towards the town and the park. And my goodness, downtown looked like an abandoned movie set. There were a lot of shuttered storefronts. And the park didn't impress us either. It cost $20 just to enter the park plus another $25 to get to the top of the mountain. And for the two of us, it didn't seem worth it to go in. Plus with the festivals going on in the park, the whole thing wasn't appealing. With some time to kill, we went further east, about 30 minutes to Lawrenceville, a typical small town. Nothing really to report, except a huge ass pothole, that nearly took our front tire off.
It was time to get some rest, so it was back to the just luxurious hotel. After an hour or two, it was off to
Pappadeaux. Now we had been happy enough to get it in Houston after such a horrible day in March, now we got to have it in Georgia too. Of the 100 or so tables, I think we were one of maybe 4 to have white people. Anyway, it was the tableside Greek salad with a huge plate of garlic bread to start. Waiter should have told us we'd get charge extra for the garlic bread. Oh well.
I had the Texas Redfish Ponchartrain with grilled shrimp, lump crabmeat, and brown butter sauce with a side of dirty rice. Freaking amazing. Mom had the mixed seafood grill and they gave us an extra skewer of the salmon, scallop, shrimp, pepper, onion, and mushroom. Fantastic. And it's cool she gets the lunch rate all day long, being that she is a senior citizen.
Back to the hotel for NCIS Hawaii. Once mom fell asleep, I walked across the street to Mellow Mushroom for a beer. But it closed at 9 pm, just as I was walking to the door. So I then headed across the main road to Marlow's Tavern, which is next to the Doubletree. I had another Tropicalia and that was really enough for me. There was one drunk couple next to me and one older black woman a few seats down. But I guess I wasn't up for conversation. I had the one beer and left .
Monday morning. The main event. Gym. 15 minutes walking, 30 minutes lifting. Another Five Daughters donut, this time, the strawberry. Then it was time to head down to the taping of Family Feud at the Tyler Perry studios in SW Atlanta. We got there around 9 am, we were supposed to be there by 10:30 am. We were among the first to arrive at the studio, maybe 12 cars arrived ahead of us. So we parked and took a bus from the parking lot to the waiting room. Probably spent two hours in that waiting room, it was like going to the DMV. We were all in this huge empty room, that was actually more like a vacant studio set. We're sitting in rows, waiting to get called up to go where we wanted. Must have been 150 of us in that room too. Thankfully, they had water cause it was getting a little hot in that place.
Around 11:30 we walked over to the studio. And what was so cool is we were sat second row, I was three seats from the center. Maybe the front of the stage was three feet from me; the seats could not have been better. Much to our surprise, we were given 60 seconds to take pictures. We were in the audience for two shows, which was just right because the audience has to give energy throughout. Another audience would come in later for the third and fourth shows of the day.
One of the best moments was the question "Name a company known for making chocolate." Four answers were on the board and the two families got three of them: Hershey, Nestle, and Ghiradelli. Steve was at a loss what the fourth answer was.
Quick aside. Now anyone who knows me is aware that I don't eat chocolate. But I know enough about it, mostly from doing grocery deliveries for the last five years. So I screamed Lindt chocolate, which is mom's favorite. And it was the right answer. Steve came right over to us and asked what it was and how we knew it. I'm just glad he didn't ask me what my favorite chocolate is, because he would have stayed on me for a couple of minutes.
The two shows will air sometime in the fall as part of Season 27. It's Morris vs Young and Young vs Rodriguez.
Around 3:45, we began our trip back to North Carolina. We had not eaten since around 8 am and I ate the last quarter of the Jersey Mike's sandwich. It took about 4 nd a half hours to get to Bucee's in Florence, SC and I give mom credit for driving all the way there in one shot. Anyway, Bucee's is the world's largest convenience store and it was my first time there. I think they have around 30 locations in Texas, and this is currently the only one in the Carolinas. Though that will be changing in 2026.
I had their XXL Brisket sandwich for about 12 bucks, really good sandwich, though the sauce is a little sweet. I think I would have preferred just dry brisket. And I was happy to take my free side of pickle slices. Only thing that would have made the sandwich better was some thin crispy tobacco onions. The diced white raw onions they offered weren't helping.
Also I got a bag of beaver nuggets. Beaver nuggets, you ask? Now I had seen billboards for these 20 miles before arriving. And just the name alone gets attention. The employee I talked to described them as corn pops on steroids. Now I was never a Pops eater as a kid, so I wasn't sure about that, but I knew corn and sugar would stand out. Well, for me it was like a combo between corn puffs and caramel popcorn. Crunch and sweet overload. And I guess considering the first ingredient was brown sugar, that should have been a clue. I brought them to work and 4 days later, 3/4 of the bag is still full. Took 8 hours to get home. I got in my door just past midnight and was up by 6 to get ready for work. Back to normal life.
