Stephen's Grocery & Gas — Local services in Athens

We stopped in here on a road trip taking the back roads home instead of staying on the Interstate. Absolutely gorgeous ride in this area through rural Tennessee. Once you get out there are not many places to stop for fuel, snacks or to use the restroom.

Stephen's Grocery and Hardware has a large selection of things from your basic C-Store items to some things for camping or minor household repair. The day we stopped there were numerous other customers in line making small purchases.

NOTE: The restroom inside the store is locked and there is a sign saying for customer use only, so you have to make a purchase to get the key. I guess this is to stop the random tourist from coming in for a bathroom break. The restroom was clean and neat and worked on our stop.

The prices of the C-Store items are much higher than what you will find in larger chain C-Stores but they probably pay a lot more buying in smaller quantity and there is not any competitor...

A guy came in while I was there asking for some water. Him and his friend were mowing and weed eating the next lot over. He told her if they could have some water hw would be back over in an hour to pay her because his boss would be there by then. She acted like she didn't understand him but told him a bottle of water would be $5+. I told him and her I would pay for it. Then when she rang me up she didn't put it on there and when I left the store she told him he couldn't have it. I went back inside made sure I paid for it and didn't leave until it was bagged and he walked out the door with me. Will never stop there again even though we just bought a house a couple of...

We stopped here on our motorcycle trip to get fuel and use the bathroom. Toilet was full of waste. I opened the back of the reservoir and saw the chain was not attached. I reattached it and flushed the toilet. The sink faucet was very loosely mounted and there was no soap. I told the woman behind the counter that I fixed the toilet and how she could fix the sink. She acted like she couldn't understand me. I asked if she spoke English and she nodded. I said "you're welcome for fixing your toilet" and left. I didn't expect to get anything, I just would have liked a...