Earlier this month, Budge and I took a trip to south Florida. That’s right, I traveled. I who have not ventured away from home in the last ten years went on a trip. It was a simple thing really. I haven’t travelled because I didn’t trust anyone to take care of my boy. I wasn’t worried about the cats since as long as they have enough food and water left for the number of days we’ll be gone, they’ll be just fine. Heck, they probably didn’t notice we were even gone except their litter box wasn’t kept as clean as they like it. My Keaudie was another story. He had to go out and pee and poop and be walked and all and for ten years, I didn’t travel because of him. Unfortunately, and sadly, he’s gone now so I no longer have that excuse.

Budge’s aunt came down for Dad’s funeral back in May and she and Budge planned this trip. Originally I was going to have Budge fly since I didn’t want her driving twelve hours by herself, but with my buddy passing away, I decided to go with her and we drove. Well, first we did $1800 worth of work to the car. That included four new tires and let me tell you, one thing I never realized when I was a kid and just took for granted is how much TIRES cost! So we got the car repaired where it needed it and set out on the road.

Now it is a LONG way to Cape Coral, Florida from here in the Upstate of South Carolina. It gets longer when you hit Atlanta at 9:00 AM. Stop and go for an hour getting through Georgia’s capital. Just as an aside, and I hope I don’t offend anyone too much, but I hate Georgia. I have deep, personal reasons for hating Georgia, but just suffice it to say if I owned a mansion in Georgia and a shack in Hell, I’d rent out the mansion and live in the shack.

In any event, we slogged through Atlanta and managed to start making good time. About lunch time, I was getting hungry and I asked Budge about where she thought we’d stop for a break and food. She said she had a surprise for me. The surprise appeared about an hour later. It was Buc-ee’s.

If you’ve never been to a Buc-ee’s like myself at the time, you have missed out in life and need to add it to your bucket list immediately. If you know what Buc-ee’s is, you can just go on and surf some more and find something else to interest you. If you don’t, let me describe it to you. Buc-ee’s is what you’d get if a Super WalMart and a Cracker Barrel had some sort of demented love child.

First of all, it’s a massive gas station. I saw like fifty to seventy-five two sided pumps as we pulled up and every one of them was full — many with RVs that looked like mansions on wheels. Then, you make your way inside past the plethora of people taking selfies or family photos with the six foot tall bronze statue of Buc-ee the Beaver, the franchise’s mascot. Once you swim through the sea of people and actually get inside, you are assaulted by a direct frontal attack on every sense you have. Hearing? Noisy as a jetport on Thanksgiving Eve. Smell? Some stuff that would make your mouth water. Taste? Actually getting some of that stuff to eat. Touch? Playing pinball through the store with 10,000 of your closest friends. Finally, Sight? You’d have to see it to believe it.

You can get things at Buc-ee’s you never knew you needed. Want a tie-dyed t-shirt with a cartoon beaver on the front? Got you covered. How about a king sized bag of Beaver Nuggets? Got it. Also, I don’t know what’s actually IN Beaver Nuggets, but they are addictive and I may or may not have eaten a bag in a single sitting and jacked my blood sugar to the ionosphere. The back wall of the store has a floor to ceiling display of every kind of jerky you can imagine and some that only exist in cows’ nightmares. If you can’t find what you want pre-packaged, no problem, you can go to the custom jerky counter and order even wilder varieties of leather meat.

The bathrooms are a sight to behold in and of themselves. Two banks of 25 toilet stalls each on the left of the restroom and as many urinals on the right with a line of sinks a mile long right down the middle. Budge said the womens’ room was the same way minus the urinals. It doesn’t take long to get through and get some relief from traveling if you’re a man or a woman, that’s for sure.

The center of the store has a meat cutting station where you can pick up a jumbo brisket sandwich that it will take you two hands and an inordinately long amount of time to eat. You can get chopped brisket or sliced brisket and the sandwiches go FAST. I almost had to smack a woman who jumped in front of me after I’d already had four sandwiches taken practically out of my grasp. They also have chicken sandwiches and a few other kinds of hot sandwiches. You know more brisket is ready because the meat cutters announce LOUDLY whenever a new brisket to be chopped makes it’s way onto the cutting board.

A bay of drink stations is right behind the meat counter and a large drink from Buc-ee’s will float a good sized yacht. Think way bigger than a Big Gulp from 7-Eleven or a Route 44 from Sonic. You finish off one of these drinks and that nice big bathroom sure will come in handy. If you don’t like fountain drinks, that’s not a problem either. They have a wall of refrigerators in a corner of the store with drinks I’ve never heard of that apparently originate from Buc-ee’s home state of Texas.

Once you gather up as much food and other stuff as you can carry, don’t plan on standing in line long to check out. The cashiers run like a machine getting people out. All you have to do is pay attention when one calls “Next guest down here!” You can check out at three of the four sides of the store too. Big banks of cashiers ready to take your money.

We finally made it back to the car with a brisket sandwich for me and one or more bags of Beaver Nuggets as well as some other sundry food items to make the drive a little smoother. We didn’t need gas then, thankfully, because you took your life in your own hands if you tried to get to a gas pump.

It was an experience. We stopped by four days later on our way back so I could get more Beaver Nuggets and Budge could get these cookies she absolutely loves. I got another brisket sandwich and this time I took my shirt off to eat it so I didn’t get BBQ sauce on yet another of my favorite shirts.

I also found out from Budge that we have a Buc-ee’s in South Carolina down in Florence on I-95. I made here promise me once the beginning of the year settles down at school we can get up early on Saturday and ride down there and get some more Beaver Nuggets and brisket sandwiches. It wasn’t too hard to convince here since she likes those cookies so much.

If you have a chance to stop a Buc-ee’s, by all means take the time to do so. You won’t regret it. All my Yankee friends though will have to come south to visit though. Buc-ee’s hasn’t made it north yet!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.