Savannah to Atlanta
Tonight we are in the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Atlanta with a view of the city skyline.
I woke up this morning with a sore throat so it looks like I’m keeping up my record of getting sick when we go on holidays !
I forgot to mention Liam’s dinner last night. He had Southern Meatloaf. Not just a few slices from a meatloaf as we normally have but A meatloaf. It probably would have feed half the family at home. He did manage to eat quite a bit of it – although he said it wasn’t as good as home cooked.
This morning at breakfast, Adrienne tried the Biscuits and Gravy – but there was quite a bit left, if you know what I mean. We left around 8.30 and headed west with the first major town being Macon. The whole drive today was pretty straight and flat, although a lot of the nearby countryside was quite wooded with pine trees. We made good time till we were about 80 miles from Atlanta when the 3 lanes of I75 West bound came to a halt. We inched along for a while but any view of the traffic ahead only showed 3 clogged lanes – hardly moving. So Adrienne got the GPS and Ipad working and found us an alternative route to try. Trouble was that the exit we needed was almost beside us and we were in the outside lane needing to get to the inside lane through wall to wall trucks. Escape was looking difficult. Then, a gap opened and I turned and darted right, across 2 lanes in front of 2 trucks, into the exit lane – we were free ! So off we went again following Adrienne’s new route which would bring us back in on I75 ahead of the troublespot, the location of which she was able to find on a live traffic website. Sure enough we got back onto the interstate at the planned spot in clear traffic !
Just outside of Atlanta is a spot called Stone Mountain. It is a large chunk of granite about the size of Ayers Rock. The guy who carved the presidents at Mt Rushmore (Gutzon Borglum) also carved a picture of 3 famous Confederate generals from the Civil War – Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis and “Stonewall” Jackson.
The park itself around the mountain is quite extensive and has various other “touristy” attractions but as this is their slow season there was hardly anything open. There is a trail that runs from the museum down toward the cliff face which gives a brief story of each of the Confederate states and their involvement in the war.
As we headed into Atlanta we picked up a quick lunch at a Subway then onto our hotel. We are pretty centrally located and after dropping our bags, we walked down the street past the Georgia Aquarium – the world’s largest ! – to the World of Coca Cola.
It is very “Disneyesque” – based around trying to unlock the secret formula for Coke. There are various exhibitions of memorabilia and we managed to spot a few Australian influences. Then it was into the tasting room to taste the various versions of Coke from around the world. “Coke” also includes various other products like Nestea iced teas, Dasani mineral water, Powerade sports drinks and Barqs – a brand of root beer here in the US – amongst them. There are some weird flavours around the world – one from Honduras tasted like Dimetapp cough medicine ! With all the flavours he tried, we are still trying to get Liam to come down off the ceiling !
As usual we exited via the shop then headed across the road and into Centennial Olympic Park. This is one of the “olympic projects” from the 1996 summer games and it is a wonderful place !. The grounds are immaculate – the grass over the whole area is like a bowling green – and the landscaping just beautiful. There is a fountain area shaped in the olympic rings and surrounded by flags from various countries. We then strolled back through the park to our hotel.
We decided to take it easy tonight – catch up on some washing etc – and had room service for dinner. Tomorrow we head off toward Memphis, Tennessee. We don’t think we will get all the way – we have more of Georgia to get through, then Alabama and part of Mississippi – at least another 2 new states to tick off our list !