We arrived in Tallahassee and proceeded to Costco to get some tires for Chelsea's Prius. They had been marginal when we handed the car over to her, and the trip out from Arizona was close to finishing them off. We had a nice dinner at one of their favorite places and talked, had breakfast and talked some more, then we finished packing up the car and hit the road to Birmingham.
There are no freeways between Tallahassee and Montgomery, so we were on back road highways the whole way. I'm glad it was light until then, and the countryside was beautiful. We had dinner at Urban Cookhouse in Montgomery, which was a small chain that I wasn't familiar with, and it was very good. This began our eating our way across middle America tour. Back in the car we went to the outskirts of Birmingham to spend the night.
In the morning we went to Big Bad Breakfast ("Lard Have Mercy!"), which lived up to its name. Kind of new Southern and very delicious. Back in the car we went, headed north. We thought of going to Dollywood, even though it was a bit out of our way, but the hours were so restricted in this pre-holiday time it really wasn't going to work out without costing us another day, which we didn't have. So off to Nashville we went. We had a late lunch, early dinner (linner) at Hattie Bs Hot Chicken. We drove by the downtown location and there was a line going around the block. We discovered there was another location so off we went, where there was more like a 15-20 minute line out the door.
While we were in line a local explained to us the origin and and diffusion of hot chicken throughout the Nashville area. The story may be apocryphal, but as they say it's too good to check. Apparently a cheating man was served chicken by his angry mistress, who had used every spice she had to make it as painful as possible. Of course he liked the chicken and it was then reproduced at one restaurant for years, gradually spreading through town as family members and restaurant workers moved around.
I had the medium and Heather had the mild. The medium was good but bordered on painful for me, but Heather's mild was a little too mild. Somewhere in between would have been about right for both of us. Forget the actual hot version, much less the "Shut the Cluck Up". We hit the road again, headed to the thriving metropolis of Mt. Vernon IL on the outskirts of St. Louis, while the hot chicken percolated through our unfamiliar digestive tracts.
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