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Day 74: The beginning of the end

Posted in Alone, Country, Home, Road trip on November 22, 2010| 2 Comments »

Can I just say how nice it was to be home? It was a quick trip, with lots on the agenda, so I didn’t get to see everyone, do anything around the house or just chill at home, but it was great anyway. It also confirmed that it is indeed time to wrap this adventure up.

Day 74 was the first day of the final leg of the trip. I flew back to Atlanta to join back up with Holly (my Volvo) and Aidan (my GPS), and we high-tailed it out of Atlanta as fast as we could. Didn’t want any negative vibes to get me off on the wrong foot (wheel?)! Soon I was in beautiful Alabama – have to stop and spend some real time there someday – and just a few hours later was entering Florida, the sunshine state. Of course, by then the sky was dark and only the full moon was shining but hopefully I’ll see some sun over the next few days. (Wish I could bottle it and bring it back up north – talk about a fabulous Christmas present!)

I had a lot of thinking time between the plane and Pensacola, Florida. And there was an article in Delta’s Sky magazine that provided additional food for thought. Deepak Chopra and Russell Simmons discussed happiness as the key too life. I agree with much of what they said, but what really stuck with me was Deepak quoting someone else:

  • The most important time in life is now.
  • The most important person is the one you’re with right now.
  • The most important way to create the future is to act with awareness right now.

Put that together with the ‘pay it forward’ notion and doing good unto others as you’d have done unto you, and I think you have the recipe for being happy. It certainly put me in the right frame of mind.

One of the best things about this last part is that virtually every stop is to see friends or family and catch up with people I haven’t seen in way too long. I know it will make the next couple of weeks fly by. In the case of this first stop, it’s to catch up with someone I’ve never spoken to: Dan, a friend of Delanie’s. She knew I was heading south after Atlanta, and needed a guaranteed better stop after the disappointment of Atlanta. Dan is a fellow traveler and lives by the water in Pensacola – stop there and get back on track. Why not?

A free spirit, Dan goes where the wind blows him. And usually alone, so he wasn’t the least surprised by my solo journey. His house has reminders of his travels everywhere – framed currency from around the world, shells collected from numerous beaches, world music CDs playing. It was a relaxing evening, complete with a walk on the beach (the water now is still warmer than the Cape in August). Delanie was right – a good way to start the end of the trip.

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Day 69: Books for some, fish for others

Posted in Country, Home, Planning, Road trip on November 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

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I’m just done with Atlanta (like you couldn’t tell). So today I simply gave up. I went to lunch with an old high school friend (Michael Laurino – go see his movie Yellowbrickroad when it comes to a theater near you) and was supposed to then tour the aquarium and finish up Atlanta touristy stuff, but just couldn’t do it. When Mike dropped me off at the curb of the aquarium, I texted Tara to see where she and Delanie were, and then just started walking.

Leaving them to have fun with the penguins, sharks and sea otters, I walked and walked until I found a book store. It happened to be the Georgia Tech book store (sorry Tom), and was exactly what I needed. It even has a Starbucks. I browsed for a while, bought a journal and a hot caramel apple cider, and sat and wrote for the rest of the afternoon. I was able to think about the next few days, make my lists and start planning. I’m taking another brief detour north starting tomorrow. I’m flying back to Massachusetts for a few days, and will pick back up on Sunday (Day 74).

It seems I missed out on one of Georgia’s real treasures: the Georgia Aquarium. Luckily Tara and Delanie had my camera (see slideshow) and Tara’s now going to share the highlights:

I’ve been meaning to guest blog for Amy since she started this trip – and now, being the only one of the two of us to see that which is the AMAZING Georgia Aquarium, here I am.  Del and I finally made it out of the room by noon yesterday and used some combination of instinct and a vague recollection of good signage to find our way to the Aquarium.  Conveniently, it was right across from Centennial Park (worth a visit in its own right).  Delanie and I met as college students, both all ready to be marine biologists (until the reality of limited funding for this type of work set in, hence lives in nursing and conservation education, respectively) and so the aquarium was a perfect afternoon activity.  We planned to spend about two hours there, arrived and texted Amy that we could easily be there until close. 

If you’ve not been, and are in the Atlanta area, come to the Aquarium.  There are five galleries, beautifully layed out, with well designed exhibits that provide a good mix of educational information and wildlife to observe.  The giant viewing window (thank you for making us see it, Dana!) should be mandatory for anyone trying to lower their blood pressure.  We watched for twenty minutes and it felt like five.   The window, with stair-style seating in front, has just two feet of acrylic between you and four whale sharks (delivered by UPS, as the story goes – look what Brown did for them!) and hundreds of other species. 

In other tanks and exhibits, there are river otters, sea otters (one that just arrived this week from Monterey Bay), beluga whales (my favorite whale – how can you not love any animal with a melon) and that’s just the mammal population – hundreds of species of fish, sea stars, jellies, an elusive octopus, anemones, spider crabs, eels, and yes, penguins too (ok, ok, they are fun to watch – I will try to keep my commentary about how bitey and unfriendly I have found them to be in person to myself – that’s for my blog and another day).   We only got lost once when trying to find the predator/prey exhibit on sharks and ended up in an unmentioned art gallery.  The take home of the day:  More people are killed by chairs each year (60-something) than by sharks (less than 10).  So swim in the water with abandon, but watch where you sit.

We repeatedly texted Amy to get her to join us and our enthusiasm for this gem, but I think she found exactly what she needed this afternoon and we all had a great day.

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Day 68 – Going beyond the Atlanta city limits

Posted in Country, Planning, Road trip on November 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

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I’m feeling a bit guilty about being so anti-Atlanta so we decided to get out of the city and see if we could find anything redeeming about Georgia. It was raining so that (literally) put a damper on many activities. Racking our brains to come up with something to cheer us all up, we decided Christmas could do the trick. We saw online that Stone Mountain Park has an incredible display of Christmas lights, a village, train depot, all sorts of cool, happy things, so we plugged the address in Aidan and went on our way. After brief detours at Starbucks and Target, we found our way to the adorable Stone Mountain Village. We loved the red brick building with the generic ‘Bank’ sign on it, the town hall that looks like a train station, the wreaths with fake candles adorning the streets. We tried to visit the visitor’s center, but it was closed. We did find a real pecan tree there though. Then we made our way to the park entrance.

Well, to quote Delanie, it was our Wally World. There WAS a person at the gate, but she basically talked us out of entering. She explained that everything but two museums were closed and the Christmas lights, etc., are only on weekends – something the web site failed to mention. So I put the car in reverse and we parked, trying to come up with plan B. A real southern belle plantation, fit for Scarlett, was just what we needed. We tried googling on our phones, looking through the Georgia brochures I’d grabbed at the visitor center, searching through the Tourist Attraction listings on the GPS. We were almost sidetracked by the world’s largest peanut, but found it was too far away. Then we learned of Stately Oaks in Jonesboro where Gone With the Wind was set. Perfect!

I won’t go into detail, except to say it wasn’t really what we were looking for. It’s a quaint home with a few outbuildings (including Juddy’s Country Store – best gift shop we’ve encountered yet), but not the grand mansion with acres of fields and dozens of outbuildings, somewhere the O’Hara’s would have lived. We asked if there are any around and they looked at us as if we were crazy. Not in real life Georgia. Figures.

We met Delanie’s friend Dana for dinner and he told us what we already knew – those are not the places to go in Georgia. He also informed us that we missed the coolest thing about Stone Mountain: we somehow completely missed the fact that it’s Georgia’s version of Mount Rushmore. There’s a huge carving in the side of the mountain. He even showed us a picture of it on his phone. No clue how we possibly missed that. Oh well – figures. It’s Georgia.

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