Atlanta Vacation Part 1

We met Dad and Mom Joyner and Rebecca in Roswell, GA for a wonderful vacation. It was going to be a violin teacher's training conference that lasts eight days, but the class was cancelled for lack of enrollees after we had already booked the vacation rental home. We enjoyed sightseeing instead!

 Lily and Anna were fairly good travelers. It was nice that Atlanta is closer than Kings Mountain.

During our stay Dad rented a mill house built in 1853. Thankfully it had been modernized since then. :-) It was a block away from the covered bridge and the historic Civil War era mill site in Roswell, GA on the Chattahoochee River. Sherman destroyed the mill and shipped the workers north during the Civil War.

 Dad and James took the girls to see it during our first morning in Atlanta while the ladies went to Walmart for groceries.

 They are at an overlook with the covered bridge and the river behind them.

We had the opportunity to see many sights around Atlanta, and the first one on Becca's list was the Coke "Factory." It is really a museum with a miniature coke bottling operation for souvenirs and demonstration purposes. 

 The main hall where you could choose to watch a 3-D movie about Coke, go taste 60 different Coke products, look around a small museum about Coke, see Coke memorabilia, get your picture with the Coke polar bear, tour the safe where the only written copy of the Coke recipe is locked up, or tour the sample Coke bottling factory where the small bottles were made for the guests to take home.

James tried lots of different flavors, Rebecca tried all 60, and I limited myself to the non-caffienated ones that I already liked. :-) I didn't want to harm the baby by drinking something nasty! I thought the samples would be only Coke, but instead they had Sprite and every other Coke product from around the world. The worst tasting one was "Beverly" from Italy. You should have seen James' face after that one!

Becca got her picture on the Coke couch used in Dancing with the Stars (or something like that).

Sample bottles of Coke being bottled in their automated machines.

The outside of the building with a huge Coke bottle.

THE Safe where the recipe was kept. If you crossed the line to get too near it, an alarm would sound.

That evening Dad watched the girls while we took Mom to Agatha's Mystery Dinner Theater downtown. There were only two professional actors, and the rest of the play was performed by the dinner guests. James and I got speaking parts to read from cards at the right time. Poor James' role was to be killed by a dragon. Mine was a sailor so I had to wear the hat. I wasn't allowed to remove it during the dinner either. It was a five-course meal with scenes from the play between courses. It was called Throne of Games. In summary, a lot of people got killed trying to take over the throne. Each time I thought I knew who the murderer was, that actor got killed! It turned out to be a dinner guest that "done it." One of the funniest scenes was another guest who read his lines from his card and kept reading "strike a pose" without a clue. I think he was supposed to act that out! It was funny and a great time was had by all.