Earlier this month the boys enjoyed a week-long Challenger British Soccer camp put on at the Navarre Youth Soccer complex up the street. My sister’s oldest son had attended in North Carolina in the past and really enjoyed it.
The week was VERY hot, and the first day was pretty hard on the boys. But by the 2nd day they were really enjoying the skills-building, mock World Cup, and new friends. I wonder if adding some Gatorade to their drink coolers helped things out for them.
Enjoy some pictures I took on the last day.
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| Jacob’s team won the mock World Cup — they’re lifting the pretend trophy into the air. |
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| A nice group shot of the whole camp — this is only about 2/3 of the kids who started. I’m guessing a lot of kids had a tough time with the heat. |
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| This is officially called “The Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain”. It’s the largest relief carving in the world…at least until the Crazy Horse Monument is finished. We all know who the guys are…who knows the horses’ names? |
As I’d mentioned in yesterday’s post about The Varsity, the only truly scheduled activity we had coming into Atlanta was a Sunday afternoon Braves game. So we had the entire city of Atlanta at our disposal for sightseeing.
What to do…what to do…
Most families staying in downtown Atlanta would have considered the Georgia Aquarium, the CNN Center tour, and/or the World of Coca-Cola. Zoo Atlanta would have been a good option too…if it weren’t for the incredible heat.
Dave, in his typical train-fan fashion, knew of a tourist scenic railroad in the area. So that’s what we sought to do. We decided to grab some same-day tickets to the Saturday night Braves game, and then headed out for the day to Stone Mountain Park which is about 15 miles east of Atlanta. We weren’t quite sure what to expect — several folks at the hotel breakfast area told us we’d have a good time and that there was “so much to do!”.
Those folks were right! Stone Mountain Park is very beautiful and there was no shortage of things to do! We didn’t quite dress for hiking up the mountain (and Dave’s back wouldn’t have been to happy with it either), but we were able to enjoy the scenic train, the skytram right to the top of the mountain, a ferryboat ride, and a fun — touristy — lunch where our yeast rolls were thrown to us by our servers!
Dave and I really enjoyed the Civil War history that’s been memorialized at the park — of course there’s the beautiful bas relief sculpture of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (and their horses!). There is also an antebellum mansion to tour, and a Confederate Museum.
One could visit the park and make a complete vacation experience out of it — from campsite to the Stone Mountain Inn, you can stay on the property. If you want to do outdoor activities, there’s hiking, biking, golf and boating to be had! If you prefer indoor air conditioned stuff, there are the museums, the shops and lots of exhibits and demonstrations.
Stone Mountain is a fascination in and of itself: the dome of cooled magma, which soon became granite rock, poked up over the surrounding geology, rising over 800′ above the surrounding area. There are gentle rolling hills around Atlanta, but Stone Mountain sticks up pretty high…
While you could pay individually for each of the activities we did, we instead took advantage of the one-day “Adventure Pass”. This let us do just about all the theme-park activities (there’s this “Ride the Duck” attraction that wasn’t included, but that’s okay). We had a military discount of $3 off each ticket, yay!
Perhaps because it was August in Georgia, who knows? The park was not crowded at all even on a Saturday, there were little-to-no lines for any of the activities we wanted to enjoy.
First, the 5 mile train ride around the base of the mountain.
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| The engine that pulled us. |
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| This is the walking trail up to the top (as seen from the train) — it’s straight up the sheer rock surface so it can get quite dangerous if it were rainy. |
Next we enjoyed a touristy Southern comfort food lunch at an in-park restaurant called “Miss Katie’s”. They’re known for throwing the yeast rolls at you. I didn’t get a picture of this gimmick, but here’s a picture I found off the web of a Miss Katie’s server throwing a roll, from the Epicurean Family Blog:
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| We enjoyed southern fried chicken and chicken and dumplings for lunch. Along with free tossed rolls, fried dill pickles, fried sweet potatoes and free fried onion petals…we were glad we ordered 2 entrees and 1 kid’s meal for the 4 of us! |
The lunch was yummy, but unfortunately was priced for tourists and our lunch for 4 was over $50.
After lunch we visited the air conditioned Yogi Bear’s 4D Adventure. This was merely a stitching-together of 12-minutes worth of scenes from the 2010 movie Yogi Bear…the 3D version. But we were in a theater that added in real water and wind effects. We had seen Yogi Bear this past spring but it was fun to experience the water and wind effects.
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| This is what I usually get from Jacob these days when I say “Smile for the camera!” |
Next we visited the Summit Skyride, which was the gondola ride to the top of the mountain. The gondola has a capacity of 13,000 lbs., and when we were loading up, it was rather freaky seeing the load weight – displayed in tons – get higher and higher. Luckily, everyone fit on board at 5.1 tons.
We enjoyed the views from the top of the mountain.
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| Can you see the Atlanta skyline out there? Trust me, it’s out there! |
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| I have a lot of peak pictures of Dave: here and here. I have one of him on North Carolina’s Grandfather Mountain too…but that’ll have to wait till I get home and dig into my photo archives. |
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| I think this is the very peak of the mountain. But I could be wrong…. |
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| Timmy was very curious about these circular depressions in the granite. It’s from rainwater “soaking” some of the softer minerals in the rock…when the water evaporated, the dissolved minerals would go with it. |
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| This is the very pretty — and very rare — Confederate yellow daisy. There’s a festival in September to celebrate it’s full bloom, but they were just starting up about this time of year. |
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| Jacob took this nice picture of Dave and me…I like the rainshower on the left side of the picture, in the background. |
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| This black swallowtail butterfly was fluttering among the yellow daisies. Way up on top of the mountain. Love how my 12x zoom captured even the detail of the granite of the mountain top. There was a tiger swallowtail, too, but he wouldn’t land anywhere for me to photograph him. |
We cooled off at the air conditioned Memorial Hall Museum, which has exhibits about the geology of the mountain…and a lot of the Native American and early American artifacts found nearby, as well as exhibits about the making of the bas relief sculpture and the Civil War history in the area.
Did you know? The original sculptor of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial was Gutzon Borglum…his design wasn’t used due to differences the artist had with his financial backers in the mid-1920s. Borglum smashed the models of his designs and left Georgia in anger in 1925. He went to Mount Rushmore, South Dakota to design and oversee its construction from 1927-1941.
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| The Memorial Hall Museum. |
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| A view of the “Memorial Lawn” – laser light shows are held every night at 9:30pm during the summer. We’d have loved to have seen one; apparently their lightshow rendition of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is pretty well known. |
Finally, and by this time we were all tired and sore from the walking around, we ended our day at Stone Mountain Park with a ride on their riverboat Scarlett O’Hara.
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| Dave might actually be sleeping here…we were all pretty tired by this point. |
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| View of Stone Mountain from the riverboat. |
We were very glad we chose a day at Stone Mountain Park over the more common tourist destinations in Atlanta! It was nice to get some fresh — albeit hot — air, and learn more about Georgia’s nature and history.
We took a long weekend and headed up to Atlanta. It’s about a 5.5 hour drive with no stops, plus we have a time zone change. We had nice seats at a Sunday afternoon Atlanta Braves game, and we booked a hotel room at a Comfort Inn right next to Turner Field, so we didn’t have to deal with (or pay for) parking.
Other than the Sunday afternoon baseball game, we had all of Atlanta to explore with our sons — but admittedly they were mostly interested in the baseball. We ended up taking advantage of a same-day ticket promotion the Braves Baseball club has for military members: 2-for-1 Upper Box tickets. So we will see two games this weekend. More about that later.
Last night when we rolled into town, I dragged the family to one of Atlanta’s most famous restaurants, The Varsity. Those fans of Rick Sebak documentaries will recognize this restaurant from his 1999 A Hot Dog Program.
Tangent: That documentary fascinates me. I’m not a huge fan of hot dogs, necessarily, but I will admit that I enjoy a hot dog on occasion, and more than the food itself is the culture and the people that go into all the unique hot dog stands/restaurants across the country. Not that I’m necessarily keeping a list, but The Varsity is the 2nd of the restaurants featured on the program. We visited Gray’s Papaya in Manhattan in November 2005. Cheapest lunch in Manhattan! And a trip to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island is on my bucket list. Really, it is!
But back to The Varsity: Dave and I will be the first to admit, the food isn’t earth-shatteringly good. You aren’t going for gourmet cuisine…you’re going for the fast, cheap (dinner for 4 = ~$25!), consistent food. And the atmosphere! Folk who’ve been there before will all warn you: at the front counters where you order is a cacophony of “Whaddaya have? Whaddaya have?” from the dozens of employees all wearing their trademark red paper hats (which are available to the customers).
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| The drive-in was put near Georgia Tech and on a GT football game weekend is one of the busiest spots in Atlanta — the brick building in the background is on Georgia Tech’s campus, in fact. |
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| A good old fashioned drive-in — America’s largest, in fact! The drive in part is a cash-only operation as you are paying and getting change from the bellhops directly. The food is brought to you on one of those trays they clip to your car door. |
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| I didn’t get a picture of the front entrance, but this is the just-as-retro side entrance. Here’s a picture of the street-side entrance. |
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| There isn’t much to the menu. Hot dogs, burgers, and that chicken sandwich in the lower right corner. There are a few other things, but really…not much. They have this orange frosty drink that I wish I had tried, supposed to taste like orange sherbert! You can also get a feel for how (relatively) cheap meals are — this is downtown Atlanta, where McDonald’s combo meals cost the same! |
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| The paper hats are available to anyone. The kids enjoyed wearing them with dinner. |
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| This was my dinner….the #1 Combo. No points for presentation, that’s for sure. But lots of points for the look and taste of a classic chili dog dinner! You probably can’t see through the chili and mustard, but the buns are sliced down the center instead of split side-wise like buns you purchase at a grocery store. |
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| Timmy got the #6 combo: Two “naked” dogs. He loved that! You can see better the unusually-split hot dog buns on his plate. Timmy devoured his dogs and called them the best dogs he’d ever had — and he’s had a lot of hot dogs in his life! |
Dave and Jacob had burgers…and Jacob had this chili-cheeseburger that was REALLY a heart-attack on a plate! Jacob loved the hot-dog style chili so much he asked if he could get a bowl of it in addition to his dinner combo. Sadly, they only come as side condiments, but being the ever-doting mother that I am, I bought him two little cups of the chili (for $0.80 total) and he ate those.
And then I bought a can of it to take home. It’s clearly hot dog chili, not really meant to be eaten by the bowlful. Jacob’s still not convinced of that…after we have that can, I found this Crock Pot recipe that I’ll be trying out for sure!
Jacob wants to go back before the end of the weekend, but Dave and I aren’t sure our GI systems will ensure two trips in one weekend. We still are planning a trip to Dwarf House before we go home on Monday…
The verdict? The Varsity is full of history, and their classic chili dogs are an Atlanta tradition that’s worth trying. It’s cheap, family friendly and close to Atlanta’s biggest tourist attractions. Worth a visit!
Who knows what that is on his cake??? Hint: it’s supposed to look like that…
About a month ago, when our friends the Goldmans were visiting from North Carolina, Timmy and Johnny had apples as a snack.
“Um, okay…I guess that’s exciting…”
Wait, there’s more! I promise!
Timmy typically makes one pass around an apple, taking off the skin and any flesh underneath that the first set of bites will cover. Then he calls himself done. He doesn’t eat any part of the apple that doesn’t have skin in the same bite. Frustrating, but at least he’s eating apples. He eats 3-4 per week, can’t complain about that….
Johnny, on the other hand, is very good about eating as much of the apple as he can, and he left a minimal core behind, complete with the seeds exposed.
Timmy had never noticed the seeds in the core before, and immediately wanted to plant the seeds from Johnny’s apple core. Amidst all the chaos of our friends visiting, I made Timmy set the seeds aside and promised to plant them when things had calmed down some. I needed time to prepare a place for the seeds to go and I didn’t want to do it yet.
We had a planter that the boys made at Lowe’s last year, complete with a window in the front to let you see the root action. I had to clean out the dead carrot plant debris and refilled the container w/ fresh soil. We planted the two seeds on July 13th. I wasn’t optimistic.
On the 18th, the boys flew up to their grandparents’ house in New York. So far, the container hadn’t done much, but on the 22nd, this is what we had:
Here it is on the 26th, just before I left for New York to pick up the kids:
And this morning:
Timmy’s so excited about this, and I’m glad I let him go forward with this experiment, against my better judgement. Timmy’s already making plans about where to plant the apple “tree” when it’s big enough to plant outside. He pointed to a corner of the backyard and declared “It needs to go HERE!”
Again, I’m not optimistic…apple trees don’t typically grow in this part of the country. I have a large patio planter that we can use, if it comes to that.
Dave enjoys cooking. It’s an occasional indulgence for him — he has a suite of yummy recipes that he likes to call his own.
Sadly, he doesn’t cook as much as he says he’d like to, since on on most weekdays he’s coming in from work while I’ve been working on dinner for some time.
Since today is Saturday, tonight he took the time to make the family the fried rice recipe he enjoys making while I’m on reserve duty. It’s really easy, and you’ll find it isn’t really a recipe, per se. It’s more of a set of ingredients tossed together in a wok or large skillet. It’s a great way to use leftovers!
The first thing Dave does is chop, chop, and chop some more. Onions, carrots, and cooked chicken. We had a couple Huli Huli chicken thighs leftover from earlier this week and these were chopped up. I also cooked a couple more chicken breasts in the microwave, see below for more on that!
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| This is our version of a “Slap Chop”-type of food chopper. It made chopping the 1/2 large onion, 1 c. of carrots and 3 cooked chicken breasts very very easy. |
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| Onions. |
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| Carrots. |
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| Cooked chicken breast. I learned a new trick to make preparing cooked chicken for recipes super-dooper easy…see the next caption. |
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| Do you have one of these? It’s Pampered Chef’s “Deep Covered Baker”. I know it’s expensive, but all you have to do is host a Pampered Chef party and get it for free, like I did several years ago! 3 chicken breasts, 14 minutes in the microwave in this baker — who woulda thunk it? |
Along with the chopped vegetables and chicken, also beat 2-3 eggs together, peel some raw shrimp and have 3 cups of cooked rice ready to go. Heat up a wok or large skillet on “high”. Add oil of your choice, we use sesame oil.
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| I love my Zojirushi rice cooker! A gift from my parents about 8 years ago. Hinode medium grain Calrose rice is our family’s rice of choice, we eat about 10 lb. every 6 weeks. |
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| Fresh shrimp, caught off Jacksonville on Friday night, ready to cook on Saturday night, did I mention how much we love Florida??? |
Start by scrambling the eggs. Remove the eggs to a dish when they’re finished. They’ll be added in at the end:
Next you’ll add the onions, carrots, rice, chicken and some soy sauce to the wok, stir frying it, adding oil as needed to keep it from sticking to the pan. With luck you’ll develop a nice crisp to the rice, which is oh-so-good!
At the end we tossed the shrimp, and then put a lid on the wok for about 5 minutes to let the shrimp cook. It doesn’t take much heat, or a very long time at all.
Serve it with a glass of milk for a complete dinner.
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| Yikes, we almost ate it all up before I remembered to take a picture of the finished product! Hence the small pile on the greasy plate with the fork in the background! |
I’d been writing about the tadpoles and our pond every couple weeks, so here’s the latest:
The pond has been doing very very well. The water is nice and clear, we’ve had very little issue for the past couple weeks, although the “hair algae” is starting to grow again, which means a manual scrubbing of the stone surfaces. I have to do this every 6-8 weeks as it is…no big deal, except it’s really hot outside!
The goldfish are continuing to flourish and grow well. I guess that addage is true: goldfish will grow into their surroundings.
As for the tadpoles, when the kids and I returned from New York, the three tadpoles each looked distinctively different from each other. One had his front and hind legs, one had long back legs, and the third one still looked like a tadpole.
Here’s the one with the front and hind legs, he was stuck to the side of the Critter Carrier when I first saw him after getting back. You can see the one with only the hind legs just below him.
Unfortunately, that well-developed one had passed away the following morning. Boo…so now we’re down to two.
The one that only had hind legs on Sunday now has his front legs, and the most-tadpolish looking one has hind legs coming in.
I’m now at an impasse about what to feed these guys — allegedly they transition from eating green matter to wanting more bugs and stuff. I might pick up some crickets at the store tomorrow.
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| Pardon the glare, I had the window down on the driver’s side, but not the passenger’s side of the car. |
On this last trip, I changed things up and bit and took US Route 231/431 up the eastern border of Alabama. This took us through Dothan, AL and Columbus, GA. In the past we’ve gone through Montgomery, AL to head towards I-85.
About halfway through this north-south route was a town called Eufaula, Alabama, which sits on a gorgeous lake that straddles the Alabama/Georgia border. The Wikipedia link will describe the town’s antebellum and post-Reconstruction wealth, and this was evident in how gorgeous this town is. Luckily, the town was (barely) spared during the American Civil War. This visitor’s guide has more information about the town’s history, and how the surrender at Appomatox might have spared the beautiful homes!
Not only are there the beautiful buildings and impeccable landscaping, but the lake that winds through the town makes it a popular vacation spot for southern sportsmen. I saw so many boats and RVs traveling up and down US 231/431, likely headed for Lake Eufaula (also known as Walter F. George Lake, named after a Georgia Senator, so it’s mainly those on the Georgia side who give it the latter name).
Eufaula hosts a traditional Southern pilgrimage every spring, I’d be interested in heading up there and touring some of the historic homes.
When driving north last Wednesday through the town, I was delighted at how beautiful it was. I made a plan to drive r-e-a-l s-l-o-w down N. Eufaula Street on the return trip on Sunday with my arm out the window with the camera. That’s precisely what I did. Enjoy these pictures I took…the traffic was very light and I was able to go about 15 mph down N. Eufaula Street.
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| The streets are lined with live oaks and beautiful local flowers. |
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| I want to live here 🙂 |
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| Shorter Mansion is a museum. |
I have a geeky obsession.
“Say it ain’t so Major Mom!”
We have a 2006 Toyota Prius, which we absolutely LOVE! Sometimes Dave and I wish we had a Mustang instead for the coolness factor, but the practical side of us really appreciates having this car! All the techno-gadgetry is a Geek Dream come true!
Last week I drove from the Florida panhandle up to Long Island to pick up the kids from their grandparents’ house, where they had spent the 2nd half of July. This meant two days of driving all. by. myself. I actually welcomed this, it was a beautiful drive — particularly among the pecan farms of eastern Alabama, and I had minimal traffic and weather problems. I was well rested, and made sure to eat healthy foods on the road so I didn’t have food comas or tummy troubles on the drive.
I try to keep my brain engaged on my drives, and with the Prius I had not one but two mental exercises that kept those dull kudzu-covered stretches of I-85 tolerable.
Activity #1: Guess What Time I’ll Arrive
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| Garmin GPSes feature a definitive arrival time. Ten points to anyone who can guess where this is!!!! Oh wait, the name of the city is written right there on the screen…never mind! |
I have a Garmin StreetPilot c340 GPS, circa 2006, I guess. It’s older, but it still works. We updated the maps in 2008 but haven’t done it since. Unlike our Honda Pilot’s built-in GPS system which tells us how many hours/minutes until our arrival (independent of what time it is), our Garmin presents in the lower left corner the calculated arrival time. This is great because I can pass along this information to friends and family when I’m getting near my destination.
That anticipated arrival time isn’t very accurate when you pull out of your driveway at 7am with an 11-hour drive ahead. Last Wednesday I decided to try to arrive at my sister’s in North Carolina as close to the arrival time shown as of 6:15am Central Time. The arrival time shown when I pulled out of my driveway: 6:08pm Eastern Time.
Equipped with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sodas, water, fruit and nuts, I only had to stop for gas and bathroom breaks, and didn’t even feel the need to buy any food on the road. I only needed to put gas in the car every 300-350 miles, so I attempted to stop every 150 miles or so just to keep the blood circulating. Every other stop was a gas stop.
When I stopped — whether for gas, a restroom break or even at a traffic light in some of the small towns I drove through — I’d see that arrival time tick upwards and I’d get frustrated. When I’d cruise on the interstates at 5-7mph over the speed limit, I’d happily see the minutes peel off the arrival time…about 5-6 minutes per hour.
I arrived at my sister’s house at 6:13pm Eastern Time, 5 minutes later than the GPS predicted I would.
Once the kids were in the car with me for the return trip, there was no way I could play such a game. But on Day 1 it was fun and kept my brain engaged!
Activity #2: Maximize the Mileage
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| This is why it’s wonderful to own a Toyota Prius! |
Having a Prius means having that nifty screen in the center of the dashboard that can continuously update your mileage. It’s admittedly quite a distraction when you first get the car, but now I’ve learned to tune it out and pay attention to the road. On this trip, however, I was greeted with incredible mileages and it made me return my attention to the console. And it became somewhat of a challenge for me — how high can I get this mileage???
I wrote about this a little bit last week. This picture was taken at a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike on Day 2 of the trip. The previous day only averaged about 45-48mpg, so I was particularly surprised at this. I’d NEVER seen the mileage this good in all the 5 1/2 years we’d owned this car. With a Prius, the braking action returns energy to the battery. On I-95, the New Jersey Turnpike and in New York, there was plenty of braking as the traffic was very tight, but moving quickly. This means more battery use, less gas use.
It turned out my route between Washington, D.C. and my destination on Long Island provided the ideal conditions for maximizing the Prius’s mileage: not too fast, not that much terrain, and plenty of soft braking action, which is more fuel efficient than hard braking/stopping, such as at traffic lights.
There were off and on rain showers, which isn’t as great on the mileage because the windshield wipers and headlights were on…those accessories compete with the engine for battery energy.
However, the temperatures weren’t that high for most of the route, and this meant little-to-no air conditioning. Also good for the mileage!
Now we’re all home again safely, with no more travel for a few weeks. There’s another trip coming up, but it’s just a quick weekend jaunt up to Atlanta for some sightseeing with the kids…
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