August Trip to Pearl River

August 18, 2022

With family plans for a major birthday celebration on the weekend, we left on Thursday, August 18 to drive down to Pearl River. Prompted by all the stories we had gotten from Jeff and Darla and from Marty, we made a stop at the huge Bucee's complex in Leeds, Alabama close to Birmingham. With over a hundred gas pumps and a sprawling store with food and souvenir stock, it is a remarkable merchandising plan.

With a vast array of sweets and bread and sandwiches and candy in a very clean and modern facility, it has been a very popular tourist stop. We bought a selection of sweets, etc., to take to Jeff and Darla's and bought gas. They seemed to be doing very well.

From Bucee's we continued on I-20 to I-65 north to Gardendale and met Carol Sue Dawson Jones for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel. Carol Sue is Brenda's aunt, but is eight years younger than Brenda. Brenda had arranged to meet her there at 10am and we arrived at almost exactly that time.

We had a wonderful visit with Carol Sue and probably sat there talking for almost two hours. It was great to have time to relax for that visit and catch up on what the extended family was doing.

Leaving Gardendale at close to noon, we had a smooth trip down I-65 to join I-20 and were soon on our usual route to Pearl River. Our diversions had only added about 30 miles to the trip. When we reached the Microtel in Pearl River where we were staying, we called Jeff and Darla. They were at the Radio Road property, so we headed there.

On the next morning, August 19, we got to spend some time with Elyse and Ashleigh and they showed us some pictures on the television of Elyse's trip to Europe and Ashleigh's Navy Officer Training. The particular picture that Ashleigh is showing is one that her group made, and she got involved because they were going to include an image of Tom Cruise in view of all the publicity he has gotten with the new movie. She wanted to make sure that it was a high quality image. So she painted that image of Tom Cruise. Her artistic talent often brings to our minds that she may get involved in medical illustration along her course somewhere.