In Search of Spudnuts

Saturday October 8, 2011
Millpoint Campground
Peoria, Illinois

 

One of the things I miss about my home town
of Charlottesville Virginia is its Spudnuts Donut shop,

 

 

 

I know I’ve talked about them before and
our quest to find its sister Shops on the road.

In Arkansas, Idaho and Utah we
were no where near the towns they were in.

We were all excited about the shop in Albuquerque
when we were there but the phone number
had been disconnected.

Finally, here in Peoria there was one listed and I
called about 2:00 yesterday.  Phone number still works
and the recorded message told me they are open from

4:30 AM to 10:30 AM Monday through Saturday. 
WOW!  Open at 4:30.  I know the owners in
Charlottesville are at work at 4:30 but the shop
doesn’t open until 6 am and stays open until 2pm.
However, if you aren’t there by 9, there aren’t many
choices left.

 

Armed with the hours and my feeling that we should
be there by 7:30 to have some choice, we set out
for the Peoria address this morning.
At 7:30 not 12:30.

 

 

But no Spudnuts.   We drove by the address twice.
No donut shop.  I hadn’t thought to bring my cell phone.
(you all already know what a bad cell phone user I am)
so we luckily found this soon to become extinct
pay phone and called the Spudnuts number.
This time it was 7:45AM.  BUT we got the same message.
Guess they don’t ever answer their phone.

 

 

We are nothing if not determined so we went
into this Kwik Mart, borrowed their phone book
and looked up Spudnuts.  

 

 

 

There it was, same phone
number, new address and in a town we were told
was “about half an hour from here”.
Well my dislike of driving/riding even overtakes
my love for Spudnuts. 
So again we were foiled.

Stop #2, Peoria’s Farmer’s Market
which conveniently opens at 8AM
and quickly took our mind off of donuts with
its wonderful fresh vegetables.

 

 

Baskets and bins were full.

 

Garden Spot had the organic vegetables
and it was where we made most of our purchases
including a big bag of those delicious green beans.

Garden spot is a family business and they were behind
the counter and refilling the bins today.
Sisters, an uncle, a nephew and the two youngest.
One standing on a stool and the other to her left
were washing lettuce and filling bags with it.

Having gotten our good fresh organic veggies
we were walking back to the car when across
the parking lot we saw

 

 

Our Spudnut disappointment vanished.

 

We brought a number of these pastries home with us
to continue to help with our disappointment.

 

 

We picked up the few other grocery items on our list
at a nearby Kroger supermarket and headed back
to resume waxing and reading.

 

Reader takes a “give the voice a rest” break
in the warm Illinois October sunshine..

 

 

As for those partying week-enders from last night,
We feel we have gathered enough evidence over
the past months to make the following statement.

Week-enders often wear themselves out partying
on Friday and are perfectly quiet on Saturday night.

And so it was again.  We didn’t hear a thing
even though party lights and fires were still there.