Day 6: Atlanta, GA

Today we got to sleep in!!! YAY!! We slept in til about 8, which I haven't been able to do since July 4 (when taking into account time differences, I woke up at 6. Uggh) After waking up and checking out of the hotel we drove to an Antebellum home in Birmingham. Unfortunately, it wasn't opened because it was a Sunday morning. We were able to drive up to the parking lot and walk around the property where the house was, so we got a few good pictures (see Leah's blog entry Birmingham to Atlanta) and walked around acting like Southern belles.

After that we got lost in Birmingham's, to paraphrase the AAA book, 'easy to follow grid road layout.' I complain about San Francisco having 30th St and 30th Ave, Birmingham has a 5th in N, S, E, W, and occasionally NW, NE directions! When we finally figured out where we were, we stopped at a Piggley Wiggly for dish soap (to was coffee mugs) and got some coffee at Forest Perks (yum!).

We decided to head out to Atlanta, GA after that, because the stops we had had in mind for Birmingham all seemed to be closed until at least 2 pm, and we wanted to get to Atlanta before night time. (Getting into big cities at night is overwhelming.)

On our way into Georgia it rained again. It's rained on us everyday so far this trip. The only state we weren't rained on in was new Mexico (and California which doesn't really count for this )

We got into Georgia I saw signs for Jellystone Camp in Waco, GA, and I knew we had to stop by to see if we could steal a pick-a-nick basket or two ;) When Jellystone turned out to be an RV park and not Jellystone National Park, inhabited by Yogi and Boo-Boo, we turned back to the highway to continue our 147 mile drive to Atlanta.

When we got to Atlanta, we first stopped at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial National Park. There we saw MLK Jr's birth home and his church. We stopped by the visitor's center and saw a really great exhibit on the civil rights movement. It was a really nice place to stop by and we had a great time.

By the time we finished with this it was almost 4 pm, and we still hadn't had lunch because we had lost an hour on our way into Georgia, so we stopped at Max Lager's for an early dinner. After that we drove around the city to check out the World of Coca-Cola (we will stop by there tomorrow, it was closed by the time we finished dinner), the Olympic Park, Turner Field (home of the Atlanta Braves) then we found a gelato place that we had a coupon to thanks to the GA welcome center.

After that we were pretty tired, so we made our way to the hotel and settled in. We hopped into the pool for a quick dip, and now we are planning for tomorrow and watching Harry Potter.

We had a great day today, the weather was much more tolerable, the humidity wasn't overwhelming and we were able to see and do a lot.

<3 Al