Jill Thomas is a rambler, traveler, and storyteller with a big laugh who lives part-time in Pensacola, USA and the rest of the time in Salt Spring Island, Canada.
Most gas stations are lackluster pit stops, with dodgy restrooms on the edge of bleak highway landscapes. Few of them are places one might recommend stopping for a ramble if you happen to be driving by.
However, when driving in the USA (especially in the south), you might come across a Buc-ee's. You will notice the billboards at least 50 miles before you get there, so no chance of missing it, and stopping is most definitely worth the distraction.
Buc-ee's is a Southern icon. Once you know, you'll likely start noticing the bucked tooth beaver logo on tees, cups, coolers, and every imaginable other thing wherever you go in these parts. If they know I will be driving by, my neighbors will request that I bring back their favorite Buc-ee's treats - especially the smoked beef brisket.
The Buc-cee's I most often end up in is a massive highway side campus on the outskirts of Auburn, Alabama, about halfway between my home in Pensacola, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia in the USA. It has over 200 gas pumps and 74,000 square feet of retail space. There's merchandise and groceries, as far as you can see, and immaculately clean bathrooms the size of football fields.
Buc-ees is famous for its pulled smoked brisket sandwiches, which feature softball sized piles of meat on soft white buns. You can also buy sliced brisket by the pound, and every time they cut a new side, the employees yell, "Brisket on the Block."
There are also hockey puck-sized pralines, fudge, roasted nuts of every variety (I recommend the Cajun fried pecans), and a deli bar piled high with multiple flavors of beef jerky. You'll also find jars of Buc-cee's pickled quail eggs, pickled okra, pepper jelly, and habanero-spiced peeled garlic in oil.
Then, there's the candy section! You're in luck if you're craving a tub of cotton candy, sour candy butterflies or giant pop rocks.
The merchandise area features an abundance of Alabama Crimson Tide tees (Roll Tide!), as well as buck tooth beaver-emblazoned bikinis, flip flops, travel mugs, lunch boxes, koozies, shot glasses, stadium chairs, soft-sided coolers, and every other manner of nick-nack you can imagine.
Buc'ees has redefined the gas station experience - in a way that is only possible or likely in the USA. It's definitely worth a pit stop.
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