So, already we are more than 2 weeks into our trip to Atlanta. It’s not all that much longer before we head off to Belgium! How time flies!
Daylight savings has kicked in, and now 7.30am is…Dark. I think they may have jumped the gun on starting daylight savings a wee bit. On the upside, it’s still sunshine after 7pm. Why can’t Queensland do the daylight savings thing? It’s totally worth it.
What have we been up to? Well, unsurprisingly, mostly work. It’s a work trip (for Murray at least)… However, we have been making an effort to see more of Atlanta this time around. Murray has been here many times and still hasn’t seen many of the local attractions, and since if I’m here, I’m here with him, I haven’t seen many either.
So this weekend just gone:
Saturday kicked off by visiting an outlet mall in the north of Georgia, ostensibly to buy some shoes for Europe. Given that my current footwear consists of thongs or sneakers (home: thongs, out: thongs, hiking: thongs, maybe sneakers). It’s plenty comprehensive for Brisbane, but for Europe? Maybe not. Murray was also on the shoe bandwagon. His Nike runners need to be retired. Like last week. Our experience shopping? I still hate shopping. Online shopping FTW. Shopping at the mall sucks.
We also drove aimlessly around the northern Georgian countryside. Why not. Spring has definitely sprung by now, so the landscape has been steadily improving from the stick-like wasteland of dead/dormant trees and frostbitten grass. Daffodils and other spring bulbs are popping up on every corner, in ditches and in fields and in general in any and every Atlantan garden. Trees have gone from dead twiggy branches to flush with spring growth or blooms with the speed of what seems to be overnight or very nearly so. It’s shaping up to be a beautiful spring.
daffodils. just some of very, very many.
Finally: The squirrels are out in force. Clearly it was just too cold the first week we were here (well, admittedly, it did snow…a little bit). Now their neurotic shenanigans are on display pretty much everywhere (much like the daffodil situation). Huzzah, squirrels!
In terms of other Americana wildlife, I’ve now seen two groundhogs and a white tailed bunny rabbit. Never seen a groundhog before..And both were more or less trundling along the side of the road. Presumably foraging for something good to eat. Not that I imagine there would be more more than roadkill and rubbish in the ditch by the road…Nutritious.
On Saturday we were also invited to check out a Roller Derby match over in Rome, Georgia. Having never seen this particular illustrious sport before, we decided to go along. I’ve heard of Roller Derby, and I had a vague idea of what was involved (namely roller skating, girls and possibly high testosterone levels), but having never actually seen it… Well it was worth a look in. The girls looked glorious hooning around the rink. It seems to be a fast-paced contact sport that would take some real skill on the skates to be good at. I would most definitely suck at it. Kudos to derby girls everywhere with their mad skater skills!
Roller Derby! Badly captured for posterity.
Sunday we ventured out again to tick off another yet unvisited Atlantan attraction. Today’s task: Stone Mountain.
Can’t complain about the view from the top.
Cherokee walking trail, apparently the trail less travelled around Stone Mountain
It’s not such a long way to the top…
Stone mountain, like it sounds… Is a great big stone mountain. Made of granite. I guess it’s similar to Ayers Rock, being a giant mass of stone. Nowhere near as massive, of course, but still plenty big enough to call it a mountain. We drove around the base, and then walked some of the Cherokee trail (more or less in solitude) before taking the main drag up the mountain with the rest of the avid Sunday walkers. It was a mild walk in what is definitely very mild (almost hot) spring weather. Still, it took me ages. I may or may not have mentioned that I was sick for most of the week with food poisoning (or maybe a virus, but my money is on something dodgy in the food I’d eaten since we are eating out so much)… So this walk was a bit of a challenge, but I thought I’d risk it. Doing a 6km walk up a mountain with gastro, having eaten almost no food for 5 days, well, lets say I have been in better form. Murray was also running on empty having backed up the walk after a 10km run and a diet shake. Hungry, hungry hippos about sums it up. But then we got distracted on the drive home by a beautiful temple and the necessity of doing a food shop. Lunchtime ended up being some time after 4pm. And that was our weekend.
Notice my distinct lack of enthusiasm? Probably due to borderline coma blood sugar. And I am channelling beetroot. Why can’t I sweat like a normal person…
It’s a temple of epicness! …Directly across the road from Publix (the local supermarket).