Hotlanta Part 2

We woke up a little earlier today, showered, took advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel, and we were on our way by 10:30.  We planned on having another touristy day today, with plans to go to the CNN center and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.  Since rush hour was over with, traffic was not a problem.  We were in the city within a half hour and we found parking pretty quickly, paying only $5 for the day.  We walked over to the CNN center and bought tickets for the next available tour, which was about 40 minutes out, at 11:40.  We sat in the huge atrium just kind of hanging out while we waited for our tour.  We noticed, and this was later confirmed during the tour, that there is a hotel attached to this atrium, so when you look out the windows of your room you are looking down onto the food court of the CNN atrium.  The tour was a kind of behind the scenes look at how they do things at CNN.  The tour started by taking you up the world’s largest free standing escalator, which took us up 8 stories to the start of the tour.  They then showed us a few videos before taking us into a mock-up studio where they show you how a teleprompter and a green screen works (if you take a close look you will notice that weather reporters never wear green).  We then went to a glassed in area overlooking a large room where all the news research is done.  As it was explained to us, the people working here are constantly looking for news stories.  In the picture below you can see a few guys sitting behind a red desk, they are the supervisors who decide which news stories are big and which ones get shown first.  We noticed that no one had any personal effects on their desk (pictures, plants, etc).  This is because from time to time the news is broadcast live from this room.  We did get a short glimpse of a live broadcast with Nancy Grace.

After the CNN tour, we walked back out into the heat.  Apparently the all time high temperature for Atlanta for this day was 89 degrees and today’s forecast was 90.  We walked a few blocks towards downtown to grab a bottle opener from the Hard Rock Café.  On the fridge in our bar we collect Hard Rock café magnet/bottle openers.  We grab one whenever we are in a city with a Hard Rock Café.  These are kind of cool because each magnet has a unique design for the city that it comes from.  This particular café had two different styles, so we had to grab one of each.

After leaving the Hard Rock we walked back to the car so we could head over to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic site.  Had it been a little cooler we probably could have walked over, but once we got there the parking was free and the a/c in the car felt really good.  They showed us a video on the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King’s life.  After checking out the visitor’s center we headed across the street to the grave of Dr. and Mrs. King, and then we checked out the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. King served as pastor with his father.  The church has been restored to exactly what it looked like in the 1960s.

After leaving the MLK Historic Site we went and checked out a couple of virtual caches (geocaching.com) nearby.  The first was called “54 columns”.  This was essentially a bunch of concrete pillars of various heights which according to the sign, were meant to represent Atlanta’s skyline.  We then went to a cemetery where we visited Bobby Jones’s (famous golfer) grave as well as the grave of Margaret Mitchell (author of Gone With the Wind).   They also had a bar across the street called “Six Feet Under”.

Finally we planned on going to the Food Truck park again for dinner.  Luckily it was only a short distance away, maybe 5 minutes.  When we got there we were surprised to see that they were closed!  So instead of lots of different great street food we ate at Chick-fil-A, which is a fast food restaurant specializing in chicken.  On their cups they even have three cows holding up signs that say “Eat mor chikin”.  The chain is also known for promoting the company founder's Christian values and each and every restaurant (over 1600 of them) are closed on Sundays.  We didn’t really think anything of it yesterday, but in Turner Field we saw a Chick-fil-A restaurant that was closed.  Now we know why.

Finally, we headed to our hotel, for an early night for a change.

Tomorrow we will probably be camping so we may not get a chance to post.

Hotlanta Part 1

It happened.  We finally slept in for a change.  So much so that we even missed breakfast at the hotel, which ended at 10 AM.  Our plans for the day were to go to the World of Coca Cola, the CNN center and maybe the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.  As usual our plans changed.  As Jackie was showering, Chris started thumbing through one of those “what to do around town” magazines that the hotel always leaves in the rooms.  He stumbled across a Braves schedule and noticed that they were in town today and they had an afternoon game.  When Jackie got out of the shower he casually mentioned to her that they should go, and to his surprise she said ok.  So we were going to a Braves game.  For Chris, this ranks right up there in the bottom 10 things I want to do in my life list.  Being a Mets fan, going to see a Braves game is about as good as having your eyes poked out with sharp, metal sticks.  So instead, we went to see the Pirates play.  They just happened to be playing at Turner Field against the Braves.  After a quick breakfast of a powerbar and juice, we headed for the stadium.  We got there at about 1:20, for a 1:30 start.  We ended up parking in one of the gypsy lots for $10, only about 3 blocks from the stadium.  We then proceeded to wait in line for tickets for about 20 minutes.  Looks like everyone had the same idea as us.  We ended up snagging some $13 tickets after applying the AAA discount.  We intentionally asked for the cheapest tickets they had because we had no plans of staying for the whole game, in fact we didn’t even care to really watch the game.  Instead we explored the stadium, ate some good food and drank some beers.  Jackie actually got a frozen daiquiri, which was appropriate on this 90 degree day.  The stadium was not all that impressive; in fact it was quite ordinary.  There didn’t seem to be anything that really set it apart from any other stadium.  The food wasn’t all that unique, except for one item.  They pretty much had the standard hot dogs, pretzels, pizza, popcorn, etc.  There was one thing that stood out though, a Dixie dog.  The Dixie dog is a half pound, foot long, flash fried hot dog with cole slaw, bbq sauce, bbq pork and pickles on it.  We had that with a good sized cup of very salty fries.  We did end up watching the game from several different vantage points throughout the stadium and we ended up leaving in maybe the 5^th or 6^th inning.  Once we got outside, Chris noticed that there was a geocache (www.geocaching.com) out in one of the parking lots.  Jackie stayed in the shade where she was asked for spare change as Chris went for the cache.  This was a virtual cache, meaning you aren’t actually searching for a container where you sign your name, but rather something interesting that is at the location.  In this case, the coordinates brought you to a bronze home plate in the middle of the parking lot.  As it turns out the parking lot was built on top of the old Fulton County Stadium, which is where the Braves played from 1966 until 1996.  The bronze plate was at the site of the original home plate in the old stadium.  There was also a physical geocache located in the parking lot as well, turns out that was placed in the spot where Hank Aaron hit his 715^th home run.  This was kind of neat.  We then met up again, walked back to the car, not before buying a bottle of ice cold water from some guy on the street, and we headed out. 

The next stop was the World of Coca-Cola.  This was originally on our list of things to do for the day.  We found a cheap place to park nearby ($6) and we bought our tickets and went inside.  Basically this is a museum for all things Coca-Cola.  They tell you about the history, they give you all kinds of information on rumors of the secret formula, they show you some videos, you see all kinds of memorabilia from the last 100+ years, you see the stuff being bottled, and you get to taste lots of soda.  They have over 60 Coke products from all over the world.  We drank some interesting stuff from each continent (except Antarctica) and we drank some nasty stuff.  Overall, we probably drank more soda today than we had in all of last year.  The nastiest soda was probably one called Beverly, which is a drink Coke produces in Italy.  It is made with quinine (think tonic water) and it has a distinct bitter flavor.  According to Wikipedia, it is estimated that for every 2000 people who pass through the tasting area, only 5 of those people enjoy the taste.  We didn’t like it but we tolerated it.  You even got to taste some unreleased flavors.  We tried strawberry Sprite, cherry vanilla Mr. Pibb, and some other interesting things.  After your tastings they give you a free bottle of coke and they dump you into the gift shop.  We bought a couple of things and made our way back to the car and drove back to the hotel.

On the way to dinner we saw something very disturbing on the highway.  No everyone has a friend or a relative who let them drive around in the back of a pickup truck at sometime when they were young.  Maybe you even sat in the back of the truck with your friend.  Things have changed and you don't see that much anymore.  Until today.  Today we saw, on the highway, a pickup truck that was weighted down with somewhere between 6 and 8 full grown men along with all kinds of supplies in the back up a pickup truck.  This was scary because not only were there so many people in that truck, the guys were sitting on the bed rails (the sides of the back of the truck), at least one guy was standing, and after they passed us, we had to drive about 85 mph just to catch up to them to take this picture.  Yes, this picture was taken while they were driving very fast on the interstate.

For dinner we went to Seasons 52.  This is one of our favorite restaurants.  Unfortunately the closest one to home is just outside of Philly so whenever we are in Orlando or other cities (like Atlanta) where they have one of these restaurants, we go.  They use all fresh ingredients and everything on their menu is under 475 calories, including the desserts.  They change menus with the seasons, which is why one time we went two nights in a row when we were in Orlando.  We were there just at the right time.  They also have a specials section on their menu which they change once a week.  They had their Spring menu out this time, Jackie ordered a swordfish ponzu off the specials menu, which was grilled swordfish with some awesome sauce, with some kind of Asian vegetables and rice.  Chris got the artichoke stuffed shrimp which came with spinach, pasta pearls and some kind of clam sauce.  We also split a flatbread appetizer and we had martinis.  Of course we had dessert too, which they refer to as “mini indulgences”.  They are essentially dessert in a shot glass (keeping it under 475 calories).  Chris had red velvet cake and Jackie got rocky road.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, which we may not have mentioned before, is only $45 a night for a Fairfield Inn with breakfast included!  We will stay one more day and night in Atlanta as we never made it to the CNN center or the MLK historic site.

Some street food for dinner

It was now getting late in the day, and we lost an hour since we crossed back into the Eastern time zone so we decided we probably wouldn’t stop anymore and we would head straight for the hotel, which was north of Atlanta.  It was late when we crossed into Georgia, just after 6, and we still had about a two hour drive in front of us.  We figured we weren’t going to make the restaurant tonight so Chris started thinking of other possible options.  The thought of a cold beer and a burger in the hotel room sounded nice, but then Chris remembered something he had seen on-line just a day or two before.  Chris has a food-truck app on his phone and during the week, as we were trying to think of what to do in Atlanta, he checked to see where the food trucks were going to be in Atlanta and he stumbled across an article about a newly opened food truck park a few miles outside of the downtown area.  The park had just opened sometime last week and every day from 11 AM to about 10 PM, a dozen or so food trucks gather to feed the masses.  For those who are not familiar with food trucks, these are the mobile kitchens, or catering trucks, which are several steps above the roach coaches that you might find at construction sites.  They essentially serve street food but the food is always a little better than typical street food that you might find at say the Cornbread Festival.  They serve everything from Korean BBQ, to healthy wraps, to tacos, to sliders, to sweet potato fries; the list goes on and on.   The food truck park ended up being only yards from the interstate.  We were extremely lucky; we found a parking spot immediately as somebody was backing out.  The person who pulled in just ahead of us circled around for about 5 minutes, and she was driving a mini-cooper of something similarly small that can squeeze in anywhere, not a beast like ours.  There were somewhere between 8 and 10 food trucks there, and not as many people as we had expected.  We immediately walked around the place trying to decide what to get.  Our first stop was for sweet and spicy plantains from the Island BBQ truck.  They were amazing.  Then we walked over to the truck selling different kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches and bought a pimiento cheese sandwich.  Next Jackie went over to the Blaxican truck (think Mexican with a southern twist) and bought some nachos with shredded steak tips on them and a collard greens quesadilla.  We then went back to the grilled cheese truck and got another grilled cheese sandwich, this time smoked Gouda.  We really loved this place and vowed to return, probably on Monday.

Pimiento cheese sandwich:

Some of the trucks:

Smoked Gouda cheese sandwich:

Collard greens quesadilla:

Finally, after a long day, we headed for the hotel, which was only a short half hour drive away.

The Circus and the Fair

We left Huntsville at about 10 AM with the intention of driving for a relatively short amount of time today, to Atlanta, which should have been about a four hour drive.  We had planned on stopping on the way, likely at Little River Canyon National Preserve, in northeastern Alabama and we planned on eating at a Seasons 52 restaurant outside of Atlanta for dinner.  Only 5 minutes after leaving the hotel, we got sidetracked.  Jackie was driving and as we were passing downtown Huntsville, Chris saw out the window the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus train parked on the tracks just off to the side of the highway.  This was an unusual treat because there are only two Ringling Bros. circus trains that travel around the country at any given time and we just happened upon one of them.  The Ringling Bros. circus travels around by train.  The whole circus takes the train, animals included!  When the circus comes to town, if the arena where they are performing is not right up against the tracks they will march the animals down the street to wherever it is they are performing (elephants too).  They usually do this at night and it happens everywhere they go, even when they perform at Madison Square Garden!  We got off the next exit, circled around and took some pictures.  We only saw the part of the train that people sleep in, the animal cars must have been parked a little closer to the arena.  After we took our pics, we headed out again.  After we made our way through Scottsboro (without stopping to check out unclaimed baggage), and across the Tennessee River, we were well on our way.  Since all we really ate for breakfast was leftover hushpuppies from last night, we were starting to get hungry.   As we approached Ft. Payne, AL we heard something on the radio calling our names.  We heard the radio station that we had just tuned into broadcasting from the National Cornbread Festival.  Since we had no idea where they were broadcasting from, we decided that if this festival was within an hour’s drive, we were going.  When would we have another chance to go to the Cornbread Festival?  What the heck is the Cornbread Festival anyway?  They said South Pittsburgh, TN, which was definitely under an hour so we went for it.  Sure, this was an hour out of the way, which meant 2 hours out of the way (there and back) but we were going.  We took a detour up I-59 back towards Chattanooga, then east on I-24 to S. Pittsburgh.  Along the way we found some more relatively cheap gas ($3.59) so we filled up again.  We found a guy selling parking spaces for $5 only a couple of blocks from the festival so we took him up on his offer.  We thought it be better to pay $5 to park then to sit in traffic for a half hour for a free spot.  The entrance had a huge cow to greet us and the festival was packed with people.  They had just about every kind of street food available, deep fried everything (pizza, cheesecake, oreos, etc), tons of tents with people selling every kind of jelly, jam, and crafts you could think of.  We were suckered in.  We bought fried pickles, cornbread salad (which was actually pretty good), cornbread and pinto beans, salsa cornbread and some jellies.  We even picked up a recipe or two for cornbread.  They had rides and games too, just like any other carnival or fair.  Chris wanted to enter a contest to see who can eat the most dry corn bread but there probably wasn't enough water on this earth to wash that stuff down.  After spending a couple of hours there and getting some pretty good sunburn, we headed out.  With the amount of sunburn we got Jackie later commented that we had now spent enough time in the south that we too are Rednecks.

Cornbread Salad:

Fried pickles:

Salsa cornbread:

Proof we were there:

After leaving the festival we headed back to our intended route.  We got to the park about an hour and a half later.  The Little River Canyon is the deepest canyon east of the Mississippi River.  When we got to the preserve, we stopped to take a picture of the Little River Falls.  We then drove down the Little River Canyon Rim Parkway, which isn’t a parkway at all, but a narrow road that winds its way along the rim of the canyon.  We stopped a few times for pictures at viewpoints and we got a picture of a large mushroom shaped rock formation that the road was built around.  We might have stayed longer in this park, or at least drove down the road a little further had we not gone to the Cornbread Festival, but still, we had a blast.

Old Number 7

We arrived in Lynchburg, TN at probably 4:25.  Immediately when we stepped out of the car we could smell the goodness in the air.  Not a fresh air smell, not a spring flowery type smell, not a fresh rain smell, nope, that was whiskey in the air.  Maybe that’s why we keep coming back.  We had been here before so had we missed the tour, it would not have been the end of the world, but we did in fact end up making the last tour of the day.  We joined the tour group just as they were getting ready to take a group picture.  The tour of this distillery is well worth the price (free).  Actually we would gladly pay for this tour if they charged for it.  The tour is about an hour long and they take you along through every step of the whiskey making process.  They start you in the rickyard.  A rick is a 4 foot by 4 foot by 4 foot stack of wood, in this case sugar maple.  They burn these stacks of wood, making charcoal which they eventually filter the whiskey through.  That is one of the things that makes it so good!  This is also what makes the whiskey different from bourbon.

Rickyard furnace with stacks of ricks all around:

Charcoal left over from burning the wood which the whiskey will filter through:

They use fresh spring water which is naturally filtered through the limestone in the ground to make the whiskey.  Below is a picture of the source of the spring, you can see it behind the bronze sculpture of Jack Daniels himself.  You could say the picture is of Jack on the rocks.

We completed the tour, being that it was late in the day, the bottling process was over with and we were only able to see a short video of the bottling process.  During the tour Chris did get scolded for taking pictures inside one of the buildings, even after the tour guide told everyone no photography was allowed inside the buildings.  Chris didn’t hear him say that, nor did Chris see the big sign with the camera with a red cross through it.  Probably because he was more interested in the whiskey.  We did take a few more outside pictures including one of the trees which have black bark, apparently because of the high amount of carbon dioxide in the air from the booze making process.  We also got a picture of the world’s largest bottle of Jack, which was inside the gift shop and in one of the pictures, up on the hill, is one of the giant warehouses where they age the whiskey.  They can store about a million gallons of whiskey in one of those barrel houses, and they have about 80 barrel houses.  The tour guide mentioned that the US Gov’t taxes the whiskey at the rate of $13.50 per gallon.  If you do the math you’ll see that we will never experience prohibition again.  It is also interesting to know that the distillery is in a dry county.  A dry county sells no alcohol.  As a result the distillery is not allowed to server samples at the end as other distilleries do.

We then started driving back to Huntsville, only 45 miles away.  Chris took the scenic route, through mostly rolling farmland and some hilly terrain along single lane backroads.  Once we got back into Alabama the roads were as straight as can be for miles.  They weren’t flat so you couldn’t see for miles, but the roads out there do not curve at all.  Today was also the one year anniversary of some really bad, powerful tornadoes that hit the area.  Many people were killed, the facility where Chris worked this week was even closed for a week due to having no power.  As we drove down some of these roads we saw, even a year later a lot of destruction.  Besides the trees that were snapped in half, we saw a few places where there were mailboxes on the side of the road but only either piles of rubble or just empty foundations where houses stood a year ago.  On the positive side, we got a good view of the setting sun and we took a cool picture of some mist covering a field.

Our last stop was something we had been craving all week.  Hushpuppies for dinner.  Hushpuppies are basically deep fried pieces of corn meal.  Hushpuppies are very popular in the South.  You occasionally see them outside of the South but they are never as good as they are down here.  According to Wikipedia, the name hushpuppies is often attributed to hunters, fishermen or other cooks who would fry some basic cornmeal mixture and feed it to their dogs to "hush the puppies" during cook-outs or fish-fries.  Other hush puppy legends purport to date the etymology of the term "hushpuppies" to the Civil War.  Union soldiers are claimed to have tossed fried cornbread to quell the barks of Confederate dogs.  Who cares if this is dog food, it is really good and for $3 a dozen you can’t go wrong!

Tomorrow we head for the Atlanta area.