Amelia's Attic in Gainesville was our next stop. Terrell was running out of time...and had to promise Carly she would only be 10 minutes. Terrell walks into the store and immediately starts hyperventilating. This store was great and very reasonably priced...and huge. My function was to run back and forth to the counter with the stuff Terrell was buying. The lady in the store was very helpful...and quickly packed everything up for us. I periodically went out to check on Carly, whose reaction was the typical "Is Auntie T done yet? It's been 30 minutes."

Once back in the car, it was time to rev up Miss Carmen to find some place to eat. She had a list of restaurants in nearby Sherman, one which sounded quaint called Buttercup. As we wound through a residential area in search of Buttercup, we all had a feeling Miss Carmen had once again led us astray. She has been known to do that from time to time and even seems to develop a bit of an attitude when you don't follow her directions. Even her "recalculating" statements begin to sound a bit annoyed. Sure enough, we drove to a dead end in the residential area where Miss Carmen proudly announced "arriving at destination." Unfortunately, there was no Buttercup restaurant to be found...only a bewildered resident nearby who looked at us like we had a horn growing out of our heads when we asked about the restaurant. He instead suggested the nearby freeway fare of Chili's and other chain restaurants.

Before we could head to this final restaurant destination, I had to search for the Sherman Muffler Man Glenn Goode had told us about. Glenn had also made this Muffler Man for another fiberglass business. As soon as I spotted him, waving to us in the usual friendly manner, standing in the middle of a field, I was thrilled. This was a banner day for finding giant people. Carly, however, was not impressed. "He looks just like the last one." Well, she did have a point. Same, shy grin and square jaw. And, true, he wore the same outfit as the last one. Glenn must have gotten a good deal on the blue paint. It didn't matter to me...I was ecstatic.

After the usual photo documentation, we were off for Chili's. Of course that was a matter of driving in circles before coming in for a landing at the restaurant parking lot. We brought our Texas road map in so we could better analyze the drive to Louisiana.

Terrell said, "I think we should take this big yellow road."

I said, "Not unless we get some oars. It's a river."

Terrell is not known for her keen map reading skills. Her preference is sitting in the passenger seat, drinking a coke and reflecting.

We asked the waitress about the quickest route and you can imagine our dismay when she said, "You really have to go back to Dallas and head from there."

Then came the wrath of Carly. "We drove an hour out of our way and now we have to go even further?!?! This is ridiculous. I can't believe this."

I assured her that we would get far that night..even if we had to drive late. So we decided our goal would be Baton Rouge (that was a bit of a stretch...we settled on Alexandria).

When we got back in the car we found a 1960's station for ultimate singalong purposes. Carly is probably permanently traumatized from listening to the disharmony of her mom and aunt singing along to "California Dreamin'."