I go back and forth from Chattanooga a LOT. Traveling over Smiley’s mountain (aka Monteagle) on the way back from Chattanooga (on I-24) is sometimes a nerve-wracking experience when the weather is less than nice and the roads are slick and there are 6,324 large trucks racing down the mountain alongside your vehicle (my vehicle of choice is the low-bid state car I regularly get assigned to me: stinky Dodge Stratus, as opposed to the Taurus or the Prius).
After recovering from today’s downhill travail, I stopped off at good old exit 114 where there have always been a buncha fast foods and cheap gas. But now, the latest addition to the grandeur of Exit 114:a brand spanking new Starbucks featuring the same overpriced coffee found at all their other locations. I’m willing to over-pay. because I like their coffee and, it’s the antidote to the jimmy-legs I get driving a Dodge Stratus over Smiley’s mountain. I’m glad to see coffee shops at key interstate exits. I wish that local folks could afford interstate exit prices, but the bite of reality is that Starbucks is probably the only game in town (at least in Tennessee) willing to pay the price.
If they would just put a coffee joint at the Waverly/Lobeville/Loretta Lynn exit going west and Harriman going east, all my travel needs would be satisfied…
Salem's Lots 