Peach Park, Alabama-A Delicious Stop

There are destinations, and there are fun stops on the way. Peach Park is one of the fun stops on I-65. Next time you’re driving south of Birmingham or north of Montgomery, pull off at Exit 205. Here’s what you’ll find….

Chilton County, Alabama, is well known for its peaches. To be fair, Exit 205 is not the only good place in Chilton County to enjoy fresh produce, but we’ll leave that for another time.

When you leave the interstate, turn to the east. Barely down the road on the right, you’ll see it: Peach Park. The main building houses fresh produce—not all is locally grown, depending on the season—house label canned vegetables, pickles, jellies, and salsa. Of course, the best time to visit is in the spring when the peaches are ripe. Georgia has nothing on Chilton County, as you’ll discover quickly. Even when the peaches aren’t in season, though, don’t hesitate to stop in. There’s more…

As you might have guessed, there’s an obligatory gift shop. As gift shops go, this one is fair. They seem to specialize in garden stuff, like stepping stones, birdhouses, and wind chimes; they also showcase a local artist, with a large selection of his prints.

I wouldn’t miss visiting the gift shop, but I wouldn’t get off the interstate for it.

Regular readers of this column have figured out that I really like food. No one will be surprised, then, to hear that what I would get off the interstate for is the food. Not all the food, though; it’s the warm peach fried pies. If you’ve never had a fried pie, you won’t understand. If all you’ve had are those things that they call fried pies at fast-food restaurants, you won’t understand. But if you’ve ever had a REAL fried pie, you won’t drive past Exit 205 without getting off.

Not just anybody can make a fried pie. They’re made of flaky pie crust, folded over a sweet fruit filling, then fried—preferably in lard. I made some fried apple pies once. Just once. That was a long time ago, before I discovered the freezer section in the grocery store. There was a slight problem, though, which explains why I only tried it once. You generally make fried pies with dried fruit and homemade pastry. Believe it or not, my crust was nice and flaky, just like Grandma’s. The problem was, nobody told me you had to cook the apples first. The pies were a little chewy. Kind of like those toys you buy for your dog to chew on.

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