Category: United States

Kristen came up with a list of hikes for us to do as we left town. I must say that one of my favorite things to do in Atlanta is hike the mountains of Appalachia. On our way home, we stopped in Chattanooga, TN to hike the Ritchie Hollow Trail.

To get to the trail head, we drove on a very small road that ran parallel to the Tennessee River. The road was very narrow. The locals didn’t feel the need to drive the reasonable speeds that we did on our way down that road.

Within the first half mile of the hike, we came across a waterfall. I started to realize it would be common to see them in that part of the country. It isn’t unusual to have a small waterfall as a stream comes down a mountain. The hike itself was very rocky. Some of the rocks made steps. There was one part of the trail where two large trees had fallen. Rather than clean the trees from the trail, they cut steps into them. Annabelle and Buster got a kick out of going over stuff like that.

We were surprised at the amount of hiking AB did that day. We did carry her a little bit on the way home. But she insisted on walking shortly after we put her in the kid carrier. We probably hiked a mile and a half before we turned back. We came to a point in the trail where several switch backs began an aggressive climb up the mountain. Annabelle loved going up them. She would have gone up many more if we let her.

We didn’t want to spend too much time hiking. We wanted to get out of the mountains best we could before we lost daylight. Linda drove up until Illinois. I drove home from there. We made it home about 4 am.

I walked to Piedmont Park with Buster and Annabelle on her balance bike. Those two together love making me run. We stopped first at the dog park where Buster managed to find a few people to throw him a ball. There was a medium size dog that tried to jump on Annabelle out of curiosity. There was another larger dog that kept howling at her from afar. Kristen met us at the dog park and we walked over to the playground. It was entirely deserted as it was a rainy day. We played tag a few times, spun her around, swung her around, etc. Then we headed back to the dog park to tire Buster out some more. He found other younger dogs to chase around the tennis ball. We left the park and made it home before it started to downpour.

Kristen came over to watch Annabelle while I picked up dinner. Andy wanted the Varsity, but Drew and his parents were adamantly opposed to that. After voicing their opinions, we decided to try out the Vortex instead. As I tried to order online, I received text after text from Kristen about what Annabelle claimed she needed. First, it was her rain boots. She apparently booked it back to the Airbnb to claim it as she was out of breath by the time I got to her. Then, she needed her Buster. She apparently rode around in circles calling out Buster’s name until I sent him outside with Kristen. Finally, she had everything she needed.

I went to the Vortex in Midtown, which was not a very car friendly neighborhood. It took me like 10 minutes to find somewhere to park to run in and grab the food. There was a parking lot across the street, but cost $15. I found a metered spot a couple blocks away, with a lot of signs stating 10 minutes for food pickup. I was unsure whether that meant I had to pay for parking or not, so I just booked it instead. Andy ordered the Rebel Outlaw since he was craving a bacon cheeseburger, but this came with bbq pulled pork and teriyaki sauce. I ordered the Dixie Wrecked Taters and funnel cake fries. I also got mac & cheese for Annabelle.

When I got back to the Airbnb, I found Annabelle watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Andy told me the laundry kept making beeping noises, which sounded like the key lock on the outside door. When Annabelle heard it go off, she would automatically say, “Daddy said I could have more screen time!”, thinking I was coming through the door. We now know who the fun parent is and who the disciplinarian is.

We went over to Kristen’s house for doughnuts and coffee in the morning before Andy started his workday. The doughnuts were from Five Daughters Bakery and were delicious. Annabelle picked out the maple bacon one and licked off all the frosting and gave Andy the rest to eat. Some of the doughnut had cake-like filling so it was like eating a cake doughnut.

In the afternoon, we went to Noah’s Ark Sanctuary, which was about an hour’s drive south. The first animals we saw were ponies, goats, llama or alpaca, and pigs. Annabelle loved petting them and tried to feed them the hay that fell over on our side of the fence. Most of the animals there were surrendered from private or struggling zoos, retired from medical research, etc. but there was a lion, tiger, and bear trio that was found during a drug raid. They were grown together as cubs so they decided to keep them in the same exhibit. I couldn’t help but compare the experience at the sanctuary with Tiger King, but I like to think this place was legit and even had animals turned over from the Department of Natural Resources.

Some other animals we saw were capuchin monkeys, brown lemurs, wolf hybrid, silver foxes, amazon birds, more tigers, etc. We actually didn’t see a lot of the larger animals, which I think was a good sign that their exhibits are large enough to roam off-exhibit. We said “hello” to the Amazon birds and they responded back with their own hellos. Of course, when Kristen tried to get it on camera, they didn’t do it the same.

Later that evening, we went back over to Kristen’s to hang out by the fire. Annabelle rode her balance bike up and down the sidewalk on her street like 10-15 times. I picked up Andy after work to bring him over, and Drew cooked (spicy) green curry for us.

Today I dropped Annabelle off with Kristen while I finished a work report. It sounded and looked like they had a blast. They went to the playground near Kristen’s house, rode her balance bike, and worked on decorating a gingerbread house. From what I hear, Annabelle asked if she could eat it and Kristen told her no. So when Annabelle thought Kristen wasn’t paying attention, she tried to sneak a taste of the frosting. However, she forgot she was wearing a mask and it didn’t work.

Before I picked up Annabelle, Buster and I went back to the dog park at Piedmont Park. That dog loves running around getting pets and stealing tennis balls. When I walked him to the park, he was pulling the entire way. On the way home, he heeled by my side.

I joined Kristen and Annabelle in the late afternoon. Here i thought Annabelle would be happy to see me and want to spend time with me. However, she decided to ride her bike to Ponce City Market while Kristen walked beside her and I drove my car. We rode the elevator to the top. It had a beautiful skyline view. It costs $15 to ride to the top. Then it was another $15 to play the games unlimited. Annabelle was free of charge. They had carnival type games like the racing horses, basketball, skee-ball, and throw baseballs at plates.

The only game we played that we were actually able to win tickets was the racing horses because we were racing ourselves. Annabelle tried all the games but struggled to get anywhere close to the target on anything but the racing horses. I let Annabelle beat me once, but then I had to beat her to teach her a lesson that she won’t always win, but can still have fun. She didn’t like that. After that, she told me she wanted to play with Kristen only because she could beat Kristen. Of course, they played like 15 times and Kristen let her win each time except the one time. Annabelle quit after she lost to Kristen. We managed to play enough times to get enough tickets for a big prize for herself (blue penguin) and a small prize for Hannah (pig). Of course, Annabelle decided she didn’t want to give it up after all, so she’s going to “hang onto it for now” and then give it to Hannah when she’s done.

We also tried to go mini-golfing, but Annabelle was not interested. She tried, but didn’t quite grasp the concept of putting. We did about 1.5 holes before she quit.

For dinner, I drove out past Druid Hills to Desta’s Ethiopian Kitchen. It was a little confusing getting there as there weren’t a lot of instructions online for order pickup. There were several curbside pickup designated parking spots if you called in an order, but if you ordered online, it was to be picked up in the drive-thru back window. It was my second time ever eating Ethiopian food and Andy’s first. Annabelle refused to eat it. We ordered beef sambusas and lentil sambusas, ribeye tibs with potatoes layered over shiro, a side of miser, and tilapia dulet with shiro served with injera. Everything was delicious, but I particularly enjoyed the miser and the tilapia dulet with shiro.

We met Kristen, Drew, and his parents at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for Garden Nights, Holiday Lights. There were some indoor elements to it, but we stayed outside the whole time. At the garden, they had large sculptures for the characters from Alice in Wonderland. They were lit up for the display. Most everyone there was wearing masks and we were outside, so it felt pretty safe.

We saw the chess set from the movie. One of Annabelle’s favorites was the sculpture of the queen playing croquet. AB got a kick out of the flamingo that was used as a mallet. Drew’s dad, Scott, told us that the sculptures have little pockets on them that hold plants. Over time they learned which plants worked best in the pockets to grow into shapes for the sculptures. I don’t think there were any plants in the sculptures for this time of year though. We did see a grass sculpture that came from Montreal Canada. That one actually had grass growing on it that was probably dormant this time of year.

One section had holiday trains. It reminded me of the train display that I saw at The Milwaukee Domes. It seemed that about half of the tracks were empty though. We wanted around to see if trains would come but often they never did. I thought it would have been perfect if one of the model railroad buildings was a gingerbread house but it seems they didn’t think of that.

There was a tunnel that was lit up with bright yellowish white lights to walk under. The grand finale for the display was a large section that had rope lights coming down from the sky. The lights were programmed to coincide with music that was playing. When we walked into that section, they were playing a song that had something to do with fire. The rope lights were alternating yellow and red colors. Annabelle even thought it looked like fire. It was amazing. We lingered in that section, slowly going through it, until we heard the whole sound track play and loop back to the beginning.

Annabelle and I visited Orme Park, across the street from our AirBnB in Virginia Highlands neighborhood of Atlanta. It looked better online than it did in person. The playground itself is nice, but it seems to have become a graveyard for discarded, broken toys. We saw a 3-legged water table with 1 missing leg, a tricycle missing a wheel, and no roller coaster for the roller coaster. The only thing Annabelle cared to play with was the swings of course.

We spent the majority of the afternoon strolling through Zoo Atlanta with Kristen. Unfortunately, it was a cold day and many of the animals were moved indoors off-exhibit. We missed the main attractions: giraffes, elephants, zebras, gorillas, other primates, etc. However, we did find new animals we haven’t seen before that are self-described: raccoon dog and naked mole rats. We also saw a binturon which looked like a fluffier dog with a narrow face. They also had 4 pandas: mom, dad and twin girls. Fun fact: the only twin pandas that survive are in captivity. Mom pandas will abandon one of the twins after birth in the wild, so in captivity, they trick the mom into thinking she’s only caring for one baby.

The train was also closed, but the carousel was open. Annabelle and Kristen rode on matching cheetahs, and were the only ones on the ride. There was an interesting rope course as well, but that was closed as well. I doubt Annabelle would’ve been old enough to go on it anyways, but she would’ve loved watching someone do it.

Annabelle and I took a trip to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History while Andy worked. When we rolled up to the museum, there were three large dinosaur sculptures in the plaza. However, Annabelle was more interested in hugging the Celestial & Terrestrial Globes (aka, big rocks).

There were Christmas trees decorated throughout the museum, representing different countries. My favorite was the butterfly tree. The first exhibit we walked through was the Walk Through Time in Georgia. Here we saw more dinosaurs, fossils, timeline of Earth’s creation, and best of all, a giant ground sloth. Kristen met up with us partway through this exhibit.

We walked down the Great Hall to the Giants of Mesozoic where there were 2 large dinosaur skeletons (3 stories high) taking up center stage. There were another 2 hanging from the ceiling.

We decided to take a walk outside to the WildWoods which was a series of bridges and boardwalks. We walked past these beautiful fern and petal pods and headed straight to the Adventure Outpost. The sign suggested the area was for 9-13 year old’s, but I find that hard to believe. The average age of the kids there must’ve been closer to 5. Parts of the Adventure Outpost were closed off due to COVID risk – there was a rope tunnel and winding staircase that otherwise looked like a lot of fun. Annabelle climbed up a 4-level tunnel, walked across a rope bridge, and climbed down the 4-level tunnel several times. There were other kids there going the wrong direction and aggressively taking over, but Annabelle was so patient and great at following directions.

We also walked through the Fernbank Forest which still had a lot of lingering fall colors. We took the shorter loop (0.5 mile) around Huntemann Pond. There were some large stones with a railing that we had to make our way down. Annabelle was proud of the fact that she didn’t need any help. We stopped by the Elephant Rock, which was named because of its appearance… I didn’t see it though, just looked like another one of Annabelle’s “big” rocks. Annabelle was starting to run low on steam here, but just tell her we’re racing and she’ll be leading the pack. In fact, as we were racing, there were a couple times when she told me mid-run to “hang on a second” because “xyz”. Once i stopped, she’d laugh and take-off, which was when I would realize it was all a trick.

After the outdoor adventures, we headed back inside to see the rest of the museum. The Amazing Animals: Built to Survive Exhibit had some interesting videos about animal’s anatomy. Fun fact: I learned the difference between a caribou and a reindeer is that the latter is domesticated. Annabelle loved screen time, though I suspect much of the educational storytelling was lost on her. I sat in a chair and waved a big flag which auto-spun me around to simulate the effort of flight. Annabelle was less than impressed.

Next we stopped at the Star Gallery where the ceiling was lit up like the night sky. This led to the World of Shells Exhibit, which we thought Grandma would really like. Then we took the elevator up to the top floor. We spent some time at NatureQuest (9 and under) and Annabelle got to run around and explore some more. They had two baby alligators as well as two terrapins.

The last major exhibit we walked through was the Fantastic Forces. This seemed to be the more scienc-y portion of the museum and we got to test out a few experiments – air pressure sending up rockets, air keeping balls afloat, melting candle wax volcano, chair that rises as a self-pulley system, tornado effects, and of course, the coin spinning thing. Rather than banking the coins, there were coins set aside for this purpose to which Annabelle sent off again and again and again.

When I asked Annabelle what her favorite part of the day was, she told me the rope bridge and the boardwalk.

We ended the night back at the Airbnb as it was a rather chili day. We grabbed takeout from La Fonda on Ponce de Leon. It was a Mexican/Cuban restaurant and we had seafood paella and bocadillo de chorizo.

We started the day out by going to a market at The Beacon Atlanta. We walked around the different vendors. Linda and I decided to split a Mexican crepe. I also grabbed a kombucha. Then we went to meet Kristen at Grant Park. Annabelle rode her balance bike through the park. We stopped at a small playground. It just had a couple swing sets. Then we moved on to a bigger play structure.

Once again there were all kinds of things to play on. They had a climbing wall. Annabelle climbed up the side of it, but didn’t want to scale it like a rock climber would. She also got to play with a bar to hold onto that slide in a track about ten yards. We also tried out a teeter totter that had the seats kitty corner from each other. There were a number of other things to play on but those are the ones that stand out in my mind.

We stopped back at Mom’s Basement, where we are staying, then left to The Lost Druid Brewery. We met Nate and Catie there for a few drinks. We sat outside at a table. They had picnic tables so we had some distance between us. We also used masks when we were in between sips. I had a black cherry soda and some tea. Linda tried a few of their beers. Annabelle rode her balance bike around the parking lot. We played “tag – you’re it” which must be AB’s favorite game. Then I was also throwing her up into the air and catching her. She was having a blast doing that. It gets tiring though so I had to take a few breaks in between tosses. We got rained on pretty good by the time we left.

We came home and I had a hankering for curry for dinner. Kristen suggested Aamar Indian Cuisine. I ordered delivery through their app at a discount. We had a lamb dhaanshaag, two orders of vegetable samosas and beef curry. The lamb was our favorite but it had some kick to it.