Drive to South Carolina

We hit the road for a family vacation/wedding weekend in Hilton Head last week.  We dropped Reily off with Nana and Grandpa and packed up Gabe, my mom and took off.  Before we left the house that Wednesday morning we made the best decision of the trip.  We downloaded Winnie the Pooh to our iPad!  What a life saver.

We left fairly early in the morning with hopes that Gabe would sleep and we could get to Nashville before he was ready for a break.  That didn't happen.  He didn't really sleep much and we ended up stopping for Starbucks in Marion, IL.  Of course Starbucks was in a Target so that means extra running around time for Gabe. 

Random Pig at a Random bathroom stop in Kentucky

All praise Winnie the Pooh

We made it over to Nashville and found a hole in the wall Comfort Food restaurant in the Arcade area of downtown.  I had Googled places for us to eat and when we got there we were too hungry to keep looking.  The place we found was great!  Gabe loved the Mac and Cheese and Scott was able to get his fried chicken.  After lunch we headed over to the Tennessee State Capital Building.  It was a hike up the hill to get there, but it was worth it.  This building didn't have a lot to see but did boast about the 3 presidents from it, Jackson, Johnson and Polk.  The capital ground even had the tomb of President Polk and his late wife.  Gabe did pretty good checking out the grounds.  I think he was just happy to be out of the car for a while.

Next politician?

Leaving the State Senate Room

Gabe's first state capital, Tennessee

We walked back to our car, which was parked in Painter's Alley.  It was completely random that we parked there but how cool was it to walk through so much history in a 2 hour stop?

Back on the road to Atlanta.  This was the first time I've drive through the Appalachian Mountains.  It was very pretty to climb up the mountains as we drove through eastern Tennessee and into Georgia.  We, Scott, my mom and I, decided that we are not fans of Chattanooga.  We were making great time until we arrived before 5pm and were stuck in rush hour traffic for 30 minutes barely moving.  The same could be said for the way back and the disgusting McDonald's we stopped in.  Once we got into Georgia it was smooth sailing all the way to the hotel.

After some hot tubing and swimming in the big pool and a good night's rest we were ready to tour a little bit of Atlanta.  We bought our tickets to the Coca Cola Museum early and stopped at the State Capital Building of Georgia first.  We didn't spend too much time at the Capital due to a cranky 15 month old (we won't name names).  But we did get to see the important rooms and the architecture. 

Georgia State Capital

Inside the capital building

Our next stop before heading to the beach was the Coca Cola Museum.  It stop was well worth the $15 per person to check out.  I'm not a Coke drinker at all but their Moments of Happiness advertising had me crying within the first 2 minutes of the video.  There was so much to see and read.  We even saw the actual vault where the Coca Cola recipe is stored.  Then Scott had the biggest treat ever, the ability to taste every single flavor Coca Cola creates, all across the world.  There was a huge room of 65 different flavors separated by continent.  Some of the European ones were not anything I could drink.  The best thing to see was all the different bottles, painted for each county or geographic region.  After the tour you were given a bottle of Coca Cola for a sample.  As a non-Coke drinker, it was pretty good!

Someone just couldn't hang(this is before the tour started)

Someone woke up just in time

The Coca Cola recipe is behind that door

Needless to say we were very happy we chose to stop there.  Then it was on the road to Hilton Head.  It was about 5 hours from Atlanta to South Carolina.  We arrived around 5, found our room and then dinner.  We were excited for our vacation to begin!