On occasion Stephen has to visit a different location for work. The company he works for has 3 stores, and yesterday he went to one of their Alabama locations.  On our drive that morning he asked me if I’d like to head over after work and have dinner together and visit the outlet stores. I, of course, said yes!!

After work I plugged in the address and our TomTom led me straight to him {side note: how did we travel before our GPS?!? It’s so incredibly convenient having something show me and tell me where and when to turn!}

After I picked up Stephen he took me to a small local place called Fish River Grill. When you sit down you are given a cup of soup called swamp soup. Both the look AND name made me question dipping my spoon into the greenish substance. Turns out it was really good, it had a mixture of  beans & turnip greens. I have never been a fan of turnip greens, so to eat something that 1) looked like it was taken out of an actual swamp, and 2) had turnip greens it, really took me by surprise with it’s great flavor.

After the soup we received a basket full of fries and our burgers…

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Hurricane Burger
(can feed a family of 4)

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The Swamp Burger
(smaller, but still more than enough for 2 people)

Being in Alabama I should know better than to be surprised by the amount of food you get for 1 entrée. Stephen’s burger was about the size of my hand, and sooo thick. It was crazy. My own burger was huge (but thankfully a good size smaller).

We were even more pleased when the waitress came up and told us we get a free cozy for ordering burgers. We happily accepted and chose 1 for each of us.

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Stephen chose the Camo to “complete the Alabama experience”.

While there we talked to the owner for a bit and she was telling us how she under-predicted the oil spill effect on their place. If people aren’t coming to the beaches, they aren’t coming to the outlets, and aren’t eating at the local restaurants like this Mom & Pop burger/fish joint. The oil spill is really starting to hit the coast, so hopefully we will get some northern winds to whip the oil in a different direction and give the Louisianna, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coastlines a break.

After dinner we went to the Tanger Outlet to walk around for a while. Driving with a full stomach is anything but enjoyable, so we wanted to walk off that full feeling. It was a good decision!

We made it back to town around 10 last night. I have to say, it was a nice change to my normal Tuesday   I think mini-trips are going to become a new regular thing for us!