Day 10 - 5/19/07 (Atlanta, GA)

Well, it finally happened. After nine days of driving I hit my first bad weather. It rained for about an hour as I left Savannah headed for Atlanta. The windshield did finally get clean though and considering the near perfect weather I've had the whole trip, I had nothing to complain about.

I got to Atlanta at about 12:30 and met my friend, Davi, for lunch near his work. After we caught up and he went back to work I headed to downtown to check out the Georgia Aquarium. It's just a few years old and I was told it was supposed to be amazing. It did not disappoint. The amount of fish they had there were great, the set up was great, and the attractions were great. Of the 6 or so different corridors you can choose to enter, the one I chose to go into first was also the best. It was one of those where you walk through a glass tunnel that is inside the aquarium so you are surrounded by the water as if you are in it. My first thought was that if this was a crappy scary movie about killer sharks then at any moment the sharks would start banging into the glass until it broke and the tunnel was flooded. My second thought though was about how cool it was. There was a little boy behind me in the tunnel he screamed every 5 seconds as another big fish swam overhead, thinking that it was coming for him. It was pretty cute and funny...at least until it became annoying a minute later. One other feature worth mentioning was the 4-D movie they had there. It was clearly meant to entertain kids (a fact the lady who sold me the ticket did not think worthy of mentioning to a 29-year old guy who was clearly there alone), but it was still good. Besides being projected in 3-D, the theater was set up with props to make it seem more like you were there, like drops of water falling from the ceiling whenever a splash on the screen happened, or puffs of air coming out at your feet to correspond with parts of the movie. All in all, I enjoyed my time at the Georgia Aquarium.

Right outside the Aquarium was the Coke Museum, which was really there just to taunt me. The original Coke Museum had just closed and this new one that was being built is opening next week. So I was not able to go check it out. I don't really like coke, or any carbonated drink for that matter, so maybe this was payback for not purchasing their product.

With a few hours to spare and nothing planned, I considered driving over to the Carter Presidential Library, but then saw the CNN Tower and decided my time would be better spent there. I took a tour of the building and studios. It was as you would have expected...kinda cool to see the studio where they filmed the news, but not too much else.

Finally it was time to drop off the car. After 10 days of driving I said goodbye to the car that took me cross country and hopped on the MARTA (the Atlanta metro service) to the airport for my flight to DC. I don't know how I made it on the public transportation with all my crap...but I survived. I quickly realized that car travel was just so much easier than air travel. The airlines computers were down and they had to fill everything out by hand. People were not happy, including me, and I was convinced my luggage was going to get lost. After an hour of standing in line and not really going anywhere with my frustration growing each second, I decided I wasn't going to let this ruin my trip. I thought back to the good times I had and forced myself to breathe calmly. It was a good trip...

That's it for my driving portion of the blog. Check back on Tuesday for a quick update on the final weekend in DC and for some final thoughts!

Fast Facts:

Today's Mileage: 302
Total Mileage: 4,018

Today's Gas Price: 3.05