The Road to Atlanta.....or Illinois???

Here goes.....marathon journey #4, part 1 of who-knows-how-many.

Friday I worked a half-day and booked it out of work to leave town. Brent had taken the day off to meet with the contractors for a final measure of the kitchen and to talk about all the electrical, plumbing and gas that will need to be moved. We quickly finished packing, loaded up, dropped Pips off at the kennel and headed out of town stopping in the 'Boro for some lunch at Panera Bread and to get our pre-race lucky muffins. I hope I never get tired of them because I am so over oatmeal, bagels and toast!

For some reason the interstate was packed with cars from Illinois. I mean, PACKED. For a while we felt like possibly we had entered some strange vortex and ended up in Illinois. I text-ed Barb to see if Illinois had been evacuated for some strange reason because it was seriously freaky. We all made our way through the always beautiful Monteagle part of the state. You drive up the mountain and then back down, and it's just so scenic. Fortunately we were able to hit early rush hour traffic in Chattanooga right at 4 pm and then late rush hour traffic in Atlanta at 6 pm. Blah. And as a side note - Chattanooga has crappy radio so bring some CDs. Fortunately we did, and I also entertained Brent by singing the few words of "Georgia on my Mind" as well as any other Michael Bolton songs I could think of. (The blurry road-side pic is the Welcome to Georgia sign. I sort of missed it!)






















And wouldn't you know once we finally got to our exit and were close to our hotel the road our hotel was on was closed due to construction!! That always happens. We ended up circling a few times and finally made it to our hotel-in spite of the massive amount of people downtown for a Hawks game at the arena next to our hotel. We were SO glad to be out of the car! Our hotel was so nice. We're into boutique hotels - I can't stand the massive chains with floral print bedspreads and unlabeled soaps. Ew, ew and ew. We checked in and new we were in the right place when the elevator spoke to us with a British accent and wished us Cheerio! on our floor. (We did ride the elevator with someone else later who was on the 10th floor and she told them Wow! so after that we weren't quite as jazzed with our Cheerio!). The hallways were lined with fake grass and there were even little carpet doormats outside each door. The beds were down and cozy and you could even purchase the little stuffed animal that came with the room. However - you don't want to share this room with your grandma or a coworker on a business trip! The bedroom had a window into the shower with very cool metal beads hanging over it. Very sexy, just like everything else in the hotel.

We relaxed for a bit and then walked around downtown Atlanta. Tons of people were hanging out in Olympic Park playing in the fountains and just enjoying the warm and humid night. We walked around for ages trying to find somewhere to eat. Downtown Atlanta is obviously not a place where you live, most things down there weren't even open although there were tons of tourists about. We finally found a Mexican joint that was pretty good. After dinner we walked back and relaxed more in the room before falling asleep for a wonderful 9 hours of sleep - something we never get to do at home!!!












Well, that's all I have time for tonight, more about the expo and race tomorrow!