For Your Viewing Pleasure

Hey everyone. It's late Sunday night and we've been on the road all afternoon. I know I sucked this past weekend with the blog updates on what we were up to down in Atlanta, so as a way of saying sorry I posted a bunch more pictures. The new additions cover the North and South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the drive afterward, and our stop at the Cadillac Ranch. I took a bunch of pics in Atlanta, but alas I forgot the camera in the car.

Hotlanta was a real nice stop for us and let us catch our breath a little bit before going into the back stretch. We finally got to sleep late, had a comfortable place to stay (compliments of my uncle), and saw some family. While down in Georgia, I got to see two of my cousins as well. We went to Jill's (cousin #1 and older sister) house one night for dinner, and met up with Molly (cousin #2 and the younger sis) the next afternoon for lunch. We ended up going to the resturant she works at for dinner as well, which was a nice way to cap our time in the city before shoving off today.

The rest of the two days was spent relaxing, taking it easy, and seeing some sights in the city.

Friday we went to Coca-Cola World downtown. I had no idea Coke was invented in Atlanta. Did you? Anyway, they have this big beautiful building where you can see the history of Coke and see how incredible and ridiculously good they are at marketing and getting the brand placed just about anywhere. They also own a ton of brands. Even more than I was expecting. If you are unsure who owns a soft drink, there's a pretty good chance it's Coke.

We got to take meet the 7-foot-tall Coke bear everyone is familiar with. He tried to kick me out of the photo and steal Susan away from me. We also got to see the whole bottling process of the soda and at the end they give each person a Coca-Cola in the classic glass bottle. The coolest part was getting to try as many as 62 different Coke products. Upstairs they had 5 areas, one for each continent Coke is on, and at each station you could try different soda drinks sold in those areas. The absolute worst was Beverly, sold in Italy. You wanted to spit it out the minute you tasted it. There were some other funky ones too, as well as some pretty delicious ones. We capped it off with North America so we could end with some good tastes in our mouths.

Saturday we went to the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the country. Susan and I both agree, it did not disappoint. We were really impressed as soon as we walked in, from the main lobby to the individual exhibits and halls. They had touch pools in a certain area where you could touch the stingrays and baby sharks as they swam by. They had some really cool stuff, including tanks on the ceilings so you would be looking up as you walked through and were looking at the bottom of the fish. They had sea Totters, which were a lot of fun to see running around and swimming. It's pretty incredible how fast they go under water. There was a beluga whale exhibit and that's something I don't remember seeing at any other aquarium. They were playful, swimming around the tank, getting up close the glass, and were generally cool to see.

The most incredible part of the place was the huge tank which had 4 whale sharks (which grow to about 30 feet), two manarays (which they expect to grow to between 20-25 feet), a hammerhead shark, some smaller sharks, rays, and a boatload of fish. It was just a stunning sight to see, the really awesome. The glass alone is about as thick as my forearm is long. The exhibit contains 6.3 million gallons of water! We just sat there in awe for a while, trying to take everything in watching all the fish swin on the other side. I got some good photos of it, so I'll be sure to post them soon.