Continued from Beckley, WV.

Now that we can check off West Virginia off of the list, it’s time to head out again. Look up everyone inside the elevator and we’ll take a photo against the reflective ceiling. You can see who wasn’t listening to instructions.

We really need to pack a little lighter.

Beautiful area, but beautiful in all the same ways. Just one super green mountain after another.

Another toll on the interstate, this one was for $4.25. We were short a quarter and asked if Little KL would donate a quarter he had found earlier to the cause. He did, and we’ll give him another quarter to replenish. Still proud of him for giving up his quarter to help out.

Here comes the toll booth.

It’s been years since I’ve had to pay a tolls in person…wait, I take that back. I pay tolls in person at the San Luis Pass bridge all the time. Nevermind.

I think we are listening to this because Ray Charles is from Georgia? And of course, we listened to Country Road while we were in West Virginia.

We’ve made so many gas stops on this trip. Our bladders and meal needs really decides our gas stops.

How West Virginia, giant exhaust tip.

Tunnel!

This was a long one. I started getting tunnel vision inside and had to focus hard to stay within the narrow lane.

Another Tunnel. If I remember correctly, I believe we crossed back into Virginia right after this tunnel.

Not too many Jeeps seen on this trip. I just now realized how many Jeeps there are in Texas.

Looking good still. Car has performed almost flawlessly other than the Apple Carplay issue that required a reset and the parking sensors not working consistently due to probably a bad sensor.

RL driving means that I can eat a messy crunchy taco.

Focus.

Rain ahead. I think we are supposed to get rain for much of the trip all the way back home to Austin.

Slowdown on the other side. We’ve avoided bad traffic due to wrecks for much of the trip so far. Been lucky in that regard.

Whenever it’s RL’s turn to drive, I turn on the router and get the kids linked on Minecraft. I’ve finally found out the fastest sequence for getting them connected to multiplayer using the router. First I connect all 3 ipads to my phone’s hotspot. Start a game, everyone joins. Then the host ipad switches to the router network, resume the game. Then the other two ipads switch to router network and rejoin the game. That works….most of the time. It’s just a hit or miss and it’s always frustrating trying to trick Minecraft into working without internet connection.

Lots and lots of oversized loads being hauled on the interstate highways around here.

A random treat for the kids to share. We always give them sweets, and then about 15 minutes when the sugar rush hits, we all regret it because they get in trouble and we are mad. But somehow we still keep falling into the same trap of giving them sweets.

Lots of HEAVY rain. Good thing we are in a Defender.

Some of the heaviest rain that I’ve driven in in years I think.

Kids are just eating snacks out of their solo cups and chilling on their ipads.

Finally rolling into Atlanta. Still the same as I remembered it. You drive deep into Atlanta on the interstate and you see nothing but trees until you get into downtown. Very little indication from the highway that you are in a very heavily populated city.

Well, got off the freeway and this traffic jam is reminding me that it’s heavily populated now.

It’s evening rush hours and everyone’s getting off of work. Kids are hungry, they asked for sushi. We looked along on the drive looking for a dinner spot to walk to, but couldn’t find an ideal choice. While we were stuck in traffic, we looked again and found a Kura Sushi literally a few blocks from us on our route. Let’s do it.

Parking garage was difficult to find and it was giving me a hard time trying to pay for parking on my phone. Annoying. Finally, walked into the restaurant and they had a tablet that lets you input your license plate number for a 2 hour parking validation. Score.

The kids’ favorite sushi place in Austin. It’s like a little taste of home for them. The menu was the exact same as the one in Austin I think. I think the best part of rotating sushi is that the moment you sit down, there’s food that you can start eating. Saves time and the kids don’t have time to get too fussy waiting for food.

Heading to our hotel now in downtown Atlanta.

Here we go.

Another atrium hotel.

They had these nanotouch (whatever that is) buttons. It was just some sort of soft clear rubber padding put over the regular buttons that collected dirt and discolored overtime. It just made the buttons feel more dirty if anything.

This is what $516 a night gets you in downtown Atlanta. The price included the $55 valet parking, which was pretty steep. There were cheaper parking options around the hotel, but I figured it was a safer bet parking valet since we are still leaving some random bags of snacks and whatnot in the trunk of the car. Better to pay a little premium than get a broken window over basically nothing of value.

On a separate note, now that I’m blogging this 4 days after getting back in Austin, I find myself writing more of my thoughts than just rushing through simple comments earlier. But I also worry that I’m worry about little details that I would have written down had I blogged this earlier.

View from our hotel window, not too bad.

We checked into our hotel, the kids got a quick bath, and then we were out the door leaving RL behind to get some much needed alone time away from me and the kids.

Kids with their wet after shower hair.

One of the items that the kids had requested to see on this road trip was an aquarium. So I added Atlanta to the list of cities that we visit because Georgia Aquarium has whale sharks. What’s better is that they also had discounted $25 tickets a person after 5pm. I was able to snatch some 6pm entry tickets which turned out to be perfect timing after checking in and having the kids take a shower.

The aquarium is just a short nice walk across the Atlanta Centennial Park.

Flying solo with 3 kids, no big deal. I did have a talk with them all before that we need to stick together as I can’t go in 3 different directions at once.

My favorite part of the exhibit, a traffic cone. I’m sure it was accidentally dropped from the walkways above the tank.

Look at this giant aquarium with all these amazing fish and coral.

Oh wait, the kids were more interested in growing digital corals on a screen.

They completely ignored the actual fish and just wanted to grow fake corals…sigh.

Hiding in that hole is a very colorful Peacock mantis shrimp. I want one.

Tunnel with a slow moving walkway.

Glad RL is at the hotel and not here. For after 6pm, it’s very crowded here. RL would have hated dealing with the kids and the crowds here. You can also walk by yourself and take your time, but of course we chose the slow automated walkway.

Cool, a manta ray. They are huge.

The slow moving platform we are standing on.

A giant manta ray vs. your typical ray.

Whale shark and the manta ray. The whale sharks aren’t fully grown.

Just a sea turtle hanging out looking at my kids.

Say fish.

I think the manta rays impressed me more than the whale sharks.

We know these birds, roseate spoonbills.

We walked by the dolphin section, which was next to the roseate spoonbills. We talked about the dolphins, looked at the spoonbills, then we were leaving the room when CL said, too bad they didn’t have any dolphins in the dolphin section. Wait, what! Were you not paying attention the whole time? We turned back around and stood in front of the glass again, and pointed out more dolphins to CL. She saw it this time with her great big eyes.

One of those white alligators made a very clumsy attempt to go up those ramps, but kept on slipping and sliding. Gave up about halfway up the ramp.

Shocking!

The petting pool. They did not police this petting pool very well, some of the kids were very aggressive. Little KL and CL immediately wanted to pet the rays.

Lol. PL said she didn’t want to pet them, walked all the way across the room and pouted against the wall to show her displeasure.

Then about a minute later, she saw how much fun the other two were having that she finally gave in and touched the rays.

The kids are so excited about escalators. Why did I take them on such a long trip to visit escalators? I should have just taken them to an indoor mall in Austin and let them ride escalators up and down all day.

Love the colorful starfish.

Found the Japanese spider crab. The kids were disappointed that it was a smaller one. They kept on saying that we can’t keep crabs as pets because I would eat it. Truth.

Just a giant octopus hanging out. Surprised to see it just hanging out in the open. I usually see them hiding in some hole or corner somewhere.

Gift shop time. I told them each of then can get one stuffy. It’s not everyday that they get to go to an aquarium in Atlanta with just their baba, might as well make it a really memorable experience.

Cute. After agonizing through the selection process, they’ve made their choices. From left to right, Sea shell, Dipping Dots, and Arr arr.

Now back to our hotel where mama will take over and put them to bed.

Nice. We picked this up a few days ago as our hotel room liquor. We drank this same whiskey when we were in Cloudcroft a few years ago, may we should make it our standard road trip whiskey.

Why is there a Ruth’s Chris inside an Embassy Suites? Shouldn’t it be a Denny’s or something a little bit more low rent? And also, Ruth’s Chris, why would you want to be associated with something so middle of the road like Embassy Suites?

Well, it seemed like a good idea for us anyway. I can’t imagine there’s too many opportunities in life to eat Ruth’s Chris in the comfort of your own hotel room wearing gym shorts and having no shoes on. Let’s do it!!!

45minutes later, the food still hadn’t shown up in our hotel room. Ruth’s Chris closes at 10pm, and we were worried that they were going to close before we got our food somehow. I walked down to the lobby and walked into Ruth’s Chris to check on status. It took a while to find the right person to find out and after some wait, they finally told me that the order was actually getting delivered to the room as we were speaking.

I came back up to the room right as they were making the delivery.

Let’s eat, I’m more excited than I should be.

It looked better in person.

This steak delivers. That was a great choice to order Ruth’s Chris as room service. Now I just need to starve myself later to burn off the extra unneeded calories.

To be continued at Nola Day 1.