My grandparents live in a wonderfully beautiful place. There is a massive lake in their back yard (1800 shoreline miles, 95 water miles) complete with hummingbirds, spiders that actually aren't creepy, bats, fish that jump out of the water just as the pinks of sunset are appearing (or disappearing) behind the trees of the cliff.

A friend and I spent the weekend in this little piece of heaven. We rode the jet skies, took in the beauty, had good conversation with my grandparents, and ate a lot...at Maxine's and Charley's. The one thing about this place is that when you step off of my grandparent's property, you step into a very odd world...that of southern Missouri.

One evening, we went to dinner at Charley's. It takes about a 1/2 hour to get there from my grandparent's house. It is so much in the middle of nowhere that we even took a gravel road. Now you would not think that with it being in the middle of nowhere that it would get any business. Let me tell you we arrived there at 4:25 for the 4:30 opening...and we ended up in line...the part of the line that had curved AROUND the side of the building. After eating at Charley's, one can understand why. His food is a spread of comfort for the "homegrown" soul.

After eating at Charley's we decided to take a drive to the old cabin. Along the way, Grandma was reminded of a new restaurant in the area that she had heard of. The name? Bucknaked. The billboard we passed had a picture of a buck (for those of you city folk, a buck is a male deer), however, when we found the restaurant it was a naked man that graced the sign. We made some observations and had a few giggles, then made our way up from the lakeside restaurant to the main road via a gravel road named "Washed Out Road." Can you imagine the address? Can you deliver that pizza to 223457 Washed Out Road? HA. I was silently pondering this as we crept up the hill when my attention was drawn to something white hanging on the trees. In the forest, white is easy to see amongst the browns and greens. It had caught my too late, but I caught enough of a picture of it to realize it was underwear! As I was saying "Did you see that underwear in the tree?" it came to my attention that there was underwear, particularly women's, hanging ALL OVER! We drove by a green pair that bore the words "Hot Tomato Eve" and a red pair that said "Sizzling Sue." Seriously?!

That is some kind of messed up fairyland...where there is also a restaurant called "The Cow Pattie."