DAY ONE...left on schedule at 10:00AM sharp. Roads were good, traffic light, weather great. Stopped just south of Cincinnati to provision cigarettes and beer (no deposit!)at the Party Source in Bellevue, KY. I made it to Elizabethtown, KY just after 6:00PM and checked into a Best Western right next to a Ruby Tuesdays. Best Western was an overpriced "dump"...almost $80.00 for a dirty room with no Internet. Ruby Tuesdays was not great, but good...Buffalo shrimp, a crab cake and plenty of beer...early to bed!
DAY TWO...left Elizabethtown around 10:00AM (I'm not meeting Roger until 4:30 or so). The Interstate is a solid wall of semis for the first fifty miles or so...stressful driving! I figure that I can kill an hour or two at Mammoth Cave National Park (see photo), but the next tour doesn't start for two hours (I've got time, but not THAT much time)...so...back on the road. I'm at the Hilton in Memphis around 4:30 and meet Roger for a drink at the bar...a well-deserved cocktail. Several cocktails later, we head out on the hotel shuttle for Corky's BBQ. The bar staff, Kate and Broady, are friendly and efficient (see photo). The combo plate of ribs and pulled pork is good as well as plentiful...I can barely squeeze in a generous serving of banana pudding for dessert! Roger handles the dinner, but the dessert is too much. Then...back to the hotel for a nightcap...off to bed early.
DAY THREE...Roger is up at 5:00M, and I'm right behind. It was good fortune that he happened to be working in Memphis the day that I got there. A smoke, a shower, a quick cup of coffee...and I'm on the road. It is not a nice day...overcast, rainy and dark. Still...I make pretty good time out of Tennessee and through Arkansas. At 11:05AM, I cross the border into...Texas! And, at 1:30, I'm sitting down for my first meal of Texas BBQ at Big Daddy's (on of Texas Monthly magazine's Top 50 BBQ's in Texas) in the town of Lavon. I order brisket (of course!), sausage and potato salad. Excellent...the brisket is tender and smokey, the sausage spicy, and the potato salad tasty. All in all, a great lunch. Then back on the road for the final 250 miles or so to Austin. And, here I am in Austin at the Days Inn, preparing to take a cab to Threadgill's (Texas home cooking, honky-tonk, and liquor emporium...I can't wait!). I'll be having their specialty ...chicken-fried steak.
More later...
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