Vacation: days 1-2

As I mentioned before, we decided to take ourselves on a tour of the south so that we could visit all the fun places while we're here.  We managed to find great deals on hotel rooms and saved on food by sharing our meals which saved money and prevented leftovers (no fridge/microwave in some rooms).  Most of our plans were set in stone, but a few were given some breathing room to accomodate Emerson's napping schedule and our pace.  If we needed to take a break, we gave ourselves some down time to be able to do it.  Also, we took almost 1000 pictures.  Yikes.  How does one pick only a few to post?  It's hard, so I've included a few collages in order to show a bunch of photos in a little amount of space.

We started our trip by driving.  And driving some more.  Pom poms and a muffin tin were the favorite toy of the trip. 

After the poms wore him out, he rested and blew some bubbles.

We drove through Talladega and stopped to get out for a little break.  There was a hall of fame there which gave track tours.  For a measly $6 we quickly hopped on the empty bus and rode with the old man driver through the longest racetrack.  The stadiums seat 175,000.  For a reference, the LaVell Edwards stadium holds almost 65,000, which means Dega is huge.  The sweet little bus driver even let us get out at victory lane for a few minutes to snap a picture.  We learned a lot from the tour guide, but the most surprising fact was that from the grass to the top of the track was 4 stories high.  What?!  It's a 33% incline and requires 90 mph just to stay on the track.  We barely missed the race which was the weekend before we came, but the stripes on the wall will be gone before the next race.

This is Emerson finding all the balloons in the book. He loves finding Franklin in the Franklin series books, but in the birthday party book, he just points to all the balloons.

 After Talladega, we drove a couple more hours to Atlanta. We drove to the temple after dinner in order to escape the hustle and bustle of downtown Atlanta.  We prefer being away from the city so a 20 minute drive to the temple was nice and relaxing.

Emerson especially loved Moroni.

The next morning, we popped out of bed and raced to the World of Coca-Cola.  On the way we breezed past Turner Field.  Hello Braves; goodbye Braves.   

At the World of Coca-Cola we were given a tour highlighting the history of coke which ended with a variety of attractions to experience.  Cool for Will and me, but not so cool for E.  He preferred running around and touching all the displays.

I don't know how to describe the next few photos.  Pretty much the screen in front of us turned our image into something fun and cool.  Just take a look yourself:

We met the Coca-Cola bear whom Emerson loved and gave a high five to.  Didn't catch the high five in a pic, but got a family shot. 

After we were done doing all our Coca-Cola adventuring, we visited the tasting zone.  They had a station for each continent of cola products sold in that continent's countries.  In this pic I look as though I've had a little too much :)  We didn't stay to taste for very long, but our feet were sticking to the floor after just a few minutes.

 

After the sticky World of Coca-Cola, we walked around the block to the Georgia Aquarium.  This is the world's largest aquarium.  We spent a few hours seeing all the exhibits they had and ended our trip with a fantastic (& free!) dolphin show.  The show was so well done and lasted about 45 minutes.  We took way too many pictures so a collage of our favorites is especially aprapos for the aquarium day.

In sum, I loved the jellyfish, Will loved the dophins, and Emerson loved it all.  He wanted to touch everything and just stared and stared.  I got to touch a hammerhead shark, a sting ray, a star fish, and an anenome.  We loved our visit to the aquarium and can't wait to visit again.