Despite the meticulous planning of the South Carolina trip, Marie and I are totally capable of making an agenda and then allowing it to just fall apart on us as the day goes on. I had thought about doing a detailed barbecue tour of northwest Georgia, sampling about four different places, one Saturday in October. We decided to schedule the trip on the weekend that promised the best fall colors and spend a good chunk of our day at Cloudland Canyon. This is a quite toddler-unfriendly destination, so Marie started the morning by dropping the baby with my mother and then, a little after ten, the girlchild sufficiently roused from a late morning’s sleep, the three of us got on the road to Calhoun. Continue reading “Walking Around Cloudland Canyon”
Category: dalton
Ice Castle, Dalton GA
Earlier this year, while looking for some background information about the Kay’s and Kay’s Kastles chains – see our post about the lone remaining Kay’s Kastles, north of Chattanooga – I came across a really fun site called Roadside Architecture, whose owner has a great hobby that we can all appreciate: driving all around the country taking photos of silly old signs and novelty architecture. That sounds like too much fun for words. Continue reading “Ice Castle, Dalton GA”
Miller Brothers Rib Shack, Dalton GA
For the last stop on our trip through the land “from Soddy-Daisy to Sand Mountain,” we pulled over in Dalton for the first time in more than two years of blogging. We have registered on the Urbanspoon Dalton leaderboard already, because, strangely I’d say, that service registers a giant, sweeping expanse of the northwest Georgia mountains, from Summerville to Ellijay, as one metro area. Despite the fact that Dalton is smaller than Rome, which is unincorporated in Urbanspoon and registers simply within the general Urbanspoon Georgia heading, all of this sparsely-populated expanse of beautiful mountain country is all called Urbanspoon Dalton, and our visits to nice mountain restaurant getaways have logged there. Continue reading “Miller Brothers Rib Shack, Dalton GA”
Armstrong’s Barbecue, Summerville GA
I first visited Armstrong’s in early November, 2001. The Reverend Howard Finster had died shortly before, and so I took my children to pay our respects at his Paradise Gardens in Summerville, a town in northwest Georgia. While there, I remember blowing a tire, necessitating a trip to a nearby shop, and also having a really inexpensive meal at Armstrong’s. According to notes that I made at the time for my old Geocities page, theirs was among the cheapest barbecue plates of any restaurant in Georgia. A princely $3.99, then, would get you sliced pork with two sides. Today, that plate costs only $6.25, which is still among the lowest prices I can imagine for this much food. Continue reading “Armstrong’s Barbecue, Summerville GA”
Edna’s Restaurant, Chatsworth GA
I went a whole eight days without going anywhere outside my normal travel radius and just about went crazy. As Marie begins emotionally “nesting” and wanting to get settled and make a safe and comfortable place for the baby, perhaps I’ve been reacting against it. I spend a little free time looking over Google Maps and wondering where we might go next. Then I start planning and charting and I’m left with more looping trips through Alabama, through Tennessee, through the Carolinas, than we may ever end up taking. Continue reading “Edna’s Restaurant, Chatsworth GA”
Marie, Let's Eat! 