**SOOO then we....**

....drove some more! We headed to Chattanooga, Tennesee - where we would be staying the next few days with Alan's cousin & her family. We woke up the next morning and drove about an hour into a small town where Alan grew up called: Etowah. It's a TEENY tiny town. I mean blink and **poof** it's gone. SO incredibly pretty, very southern and just fun :) We were HUNGRY once we hit Etowah. We remembered this YUMMY southern cooking place from our last visit and we couldn't WAIT to stop for lunch there. It's called "The Farmhouse". Here it is:

Isn't it CUTE!! The food is SO GOOD. Oh man..I already miss it! If you're ever that way..you gotta go!


I have no idea why...but cute little signs like this make my day!

Our cuties after their bellies were filled :)

Savannah says that there is no sweet tea like real southern sweet tea. I'm with her! No joke - I mean we have some good sweet tea here in Texas but there is just SOMETHING about deep southern sweet tea ;)

I love this shot of them!


Now that we had our fill of yummy lunch - we went to see Alan's childhood friend, Chuck. He met us up at his house and we visited for a while...I got some shots of some interesting things near his family's home. Like this.....

This is what they call a Spring House. It's pretty old. Water used to run underneath and this is where they would store their canned goods and jams/jellies. This is right across the street from their home. Chuck grew up in the big house across the street (which ummm...I totally forgot to get a picture of! Duh!)

Where our kids are standing is another interesting site...

This is just an old firepit - it's right in front of the spring house. I loved it!


Savannah found something she loved and wanted to take home:

How CUTE is that puppy!! It's Chuck's (Alan's childhood friend) daughter's new puppy. I totally forgot his name but oh man that was one sweet pup! He's a miniature schnauzer.

So while Savannah was loving on that pup - I noticed this HUGE butterfly that landed on a bush right in front of their home ...just look at him! I knew I had to get a shot of him. It's like he KNEW he was being photographed, LOL! Isn't he beautiful?

While we were chatting with Chuck - we decided to meet up later with his family for dinner so we decided to drive around town a little bit, for Alan to reminisce some...

Here he is (isn't he CUTE!) in front of his high school sign...

...and we drove to see the house he grew up in. No one lives in it now...it's all lonesome. I love the side shot I got of it. Alan's a little sad to see it so run down :(


This is a shot of the little bitty downtown area of Etowah...

And no drive is complete without seeing one of these:

Can you imagine the jokes going on in our car with 2 teenagers? I'm not even going to go there, LOL!! BUT I will tell you while I was taking the snaps of this hilariously ginormous rooster - I could HEAR the laughter coming from our vehicle....along with a few "Really's?"

We stopped to get gas at a little bitty gas station and that rooster was just out front.
I said I had to have a picture of that...

So after driving for a bit longer we met up with Alan's buddy & his family a while later for dinner at Cracker Barrel a bit down the road in one of the bigger towns, Athens.

Shaypher outside in one of the Tennesee (GO VOLS!) rockers :)

We called it a night after that and drove back to Chattanooga for the night.
I'll share our next few days of our trip tomorrow!

Have a great Thursday!