On Our Way to Atlanta

Four years ago last April, Meg and Cameron left the San Diego Zoo happy to have seen their beloved set of pandas, especially since they were going to be returned to China a month later.  After some discussion the two of them decided that the next zoo that they wanted to visit was the one in Atlanta.  They had already visited the pandas in the rest of the United States - Memphis, Washington D.C. and San Diego.  Since Atlanta was the only other zoo with pandas, it only made sense to put visiting that zoo on Meg and Cameron's bucket list.

Doug and I agreed to their request immediately.  It seemed like such an easy trip to make.  Phil was living in Atlanta and we could schedule our visit for the weekend of the 4th of July, 2020 when Doug would have a few days off from work.  I booked the trip shortly after the first of the year and we all started checking out other places to visit in Atlanta to visit while we were there.  Unfortunately, the pandemic hit hard in the spring of 2020 and we soon realized that we would have to cancel our plans.  I wasn't too worried about rescheduling as we still had three years to visit the pandas before Cameron left for college.

Meg had taken iCore during the summer of 2021 and had an internship with Plante Moran in 2022.  Thus, it was three years after our original scheduled visit to Atlanta before we could even talk about a date to visit its zoo.  I suggested to Meg and Cameron that the three of us travel with Doug to Ocala in late June.  We would be able to stop in Atlanta on the way and finally see the last two pandas in the United States.  It would also give us a chance to take one last trip with just the four of us before Cameron left for college and Meg moved to Chicago.

Today, we packed the Pilot and headed toward Atlanta.  We knew that it would be dinner time before we made it to Georgia's capital.  Since Stone Mountain was the only place that would be open after dark, we decided that we would stop there first.  It was a lot more commercial than I remembered from my visit in 1985 with my high school band.  It was also more racist than I realized during my first visited as the KKK funded the Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis carvings in the side of the quartz mountain.  Although I was extremely uncomfortable when we first arrived, we did enjoy dinner and a round of miniature golf before the laser light show.  The performance was enjoyable and I was glad to see that the tourists enjoying the park at night were multi-ethnic.  After a very busy day, we finally made it to our hotel at 11 p.m., tired, but happy with the first leg of our long awaited road trip.