Cosgroovey!

We arrived at our first official destination stop at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, which happened to be check-out time for our hotel. We decided to roll the dice and see if they happened to have a room ready. We weren't so lucky.

The M.O.D. (that's Manager On Duty for you folks not in the hospitality industry) told us they had a full house the night before, so there would be no rooms available until afternoon. In case we didn't believe him, he called over the head of housekeeping, to corroborate his story. She explained to us how her day from here on out would unfold, from the half-hour that her entire crew would have for lunch starting at noon and ending precisely at twelve-thirty. She was very proud of the fact that they could all consume their midday meal in thirty minutes, as she repeated this fact at least two times. We smile and thanked them for their dilligence and told them we would check back later. The M.O.D. apologized profusely and gave us his card and asked us to call later, and they would try to get our room done as one of the first ones. We assured him this was not necessary, as we were meeting a friend and would just hang out with her until check-in time. But he insisted, so we took his card and went to meet our friend for lunch.

We first met "Bizzie" on Twitter. We became friends, and somewhere along the way, learned enough about each other to become a sort of extended family. She lives in a town we refer to as Cosgroveville, named so for her favorite actor, Danny Cosgrove, an actor on the long-running daytime soap opera, Guiding Light. Located just about in the middle of Tennessee, it has something like 10 hotels and 500 restaurants, but the "mall" has one store: JC Penneys. It's a big town with a little town feel, and we were ready to do some exploring. We met Bizzie at Christy's restaurant, which was kind of like a diner with a big restaurant feel. The burgers were good and the company was great.

After lunch we went to see a famous local landmark, a giant pink elephant on waterskis that wears a yellow-polka-dotted bikini and shades. We goofed around for a little bit there, then headed over to an activity park that has a putt-putt golf course and played eighteen holes of varying degrees of embarassment, and we all showed why putt-putt golf isn't a professional sport.

They also had a thing called "Water Wars" that involved putting water balloons in a giant sling shot and flinging said water balloons at your opponent. We passed on this activity. We also passed on paintball, as it is kind of messy and can be painful. But we did get on the go-carts, which I am horrible at and came in last, but managed to not crash despite Bizzie cutting me off in an "S" curve. After all this excitement, we sat on their deck with refreshments and talked until it was time to head back to the hotel. We agreed to meet for dinner in a couple of hours.

Our room was really nice. It had a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, and a microwave, as well as a really big bathroom. After unloading the car and exploring the hotel, and changing into non-sweaty clothes (it was sunny and in the mid-90's while we were putt-putting), we headed off to meet Bizzie at Logan's.

Something we found truly amazing about this "little" town was the number of restaurants that were there. In fact, it seems like the main employer in this town are restaurants. And their parking lots were packed no matter the time of day you drove by. During dinner we planned our next day's activities and shared some more stories. After this nice, leisurely dinner, we were pooped, and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next day's adventures.