Current location: Maggie Valley, NC, N 35 31.330', W 083 01.892', elev 2721 ft.

On friday, I drove from Brunswick to Savannah to Atlanta, Georgia before stopping for the evening. So today, I spent the day in Atlanta.

My first stop was here:


This is CNN

At CNN, I paid $10 to park and another $10 for the tour. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I was thinking it might be neat to see a news studio, it might be neat to see the groundbreaking cable news system. As I was paying the tour fee I was already starting to think I wouldn't enjoy the tour, but since I had already paid for parking, my thinking was I might as well continue; I might learn something. The tour was a load of bullshit. It was a gradual walk down 8 stories worth of stairs, with a stop on each floor. They talk about how the news gets made. They talk about how the robots on camera read from the teleprompter. They are just robots, unable to deviate from the script, not comprehending what they are reading. The whole tour was given by robots, toeing the company line, spewing the propaganda. The tour guide talked all in cliches. He talked about how the news is all about the integrity of the stories. When I think of stories, the word story, I don't think of news, I think of fiction. I certainly don't think of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes kissing, which is all they were broadcasting the whole time. You would think CNN invented news. You would think CNN was the last bastion of integrity in news. I've got news for you CNN, when you are owned by a conglomerate, you have no integrity either. When your studio tour ends in a giftshop, you are not relevant. CNN studio tour is not a tour of a working news station, it is a tour of a working rhetoric station.

Eh, that was just a wordy way of saying: not worth the price of admission.

Next I went to Turner Field to see the Braves play the Orioles. I was pleasantly surprised by the field and the knowledgable Atlanta fans. The fans were really into the game for the most part, and didn't need to be told when to cheer and when to make noise like "fans" at a Yankees game. (Robert, Jim, Constantino, Casey, that one's for you). Once again, I payed more for parking ($10) than I did for admission to the game ($5). I actually had to sit in my $5 dollar ticket this time though, as the stadium was mostly full. My ticket was actually in the the very top row of the stadium, the furthest seats away. And once again, the home team won (though they made it interesting!), continuing my streak. I have been to 7 games in 6 stadiums so far this summer, and the home team has won all of those games. I only have a few complaints about the game: The grass in the outfield is a little too chewed up, there were still fans sauntering into the park in the 5th inning, and, too many fans left at the end of the 7th inning after the Braves had scored 4 runs. Well, the Orioles tied it up 4-4 in the top of the 9th before the Braves won it with a walk-off homer by Andruw Jones in the bottom. By the way, the baseball park is an excellent place to meet women. At least the kind of women that I like. When leaving the park, I was a little taken-aback by a street vendor walking up to me and trying to sell me fresh, real pork rinds. Ewwww.

Next up was the World of Coca-Cola.



I was under the impression it was a headquarters of some sort, with some memorabilia, maybe a small museum, and a tour of the workings. It was, sort of, but it was another huge propaganda fest. You would think Coke cured world hunger and was responsible for world peace. The place was billed as a giant, three floor museum, with a self guided tour. Its actually quite small, and is really only 1 floor, soda fountains and gift shops don't count as floors. Entrance fee was $9, and again, not really worth it. There was a highlight though, on the top floor, they had a 12 minute film showing. The film depicted Coca-Cola inventing electricity, curing cancer, and overthrowing dictators. The film was silently hilarious; it was produced in 1990 and was just a long stream of people enjoying Coke around the world dressed in those awful transitional clothes, when people went from the 80's to the 90's. Some pictures were taken in places that no longer exist, like East Germany, Bandu Aceh, and Atlantis. 95% of the museum was on the third floor. The second floor was a giant soda fountain, you could drink as much as you wanted. They had a wall with regular Coke products, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite, etc. They had a wall of 20 eclectic regional Coca-Cola products from around the United States, like Mello Yellow, and then another wall with 20 Coca-Cola drinks from around the world, like bottled goat piss. No New Coke, and surprisingly, none of the new Coke flavors they are pitching right now, Coke Zero, Diet Coke with Splenda, or Coke with Lime. You put de lime in de Coke, you nut. The floor in this room was unbelievably sticky; worse than any movie theater you've ever been in. Finally, the ground floor, as I mentioned above, was nothing but a giant gift shop. Once again, not worth the price of admission.

My final stop for today was the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Monument. National monuments are like National Park-lite, interesting and fun, just not as big, and not receiving as many funds. I got to the monument at 5:45, it closed at 6, so I only had a bit of time to collect my NP brochure for the collection, and take a few photos.



Dr. King's tomb

The rest of today's photos.

After leaving Atlanta, I drove up to Maggie Valley, North Carolina before stopping for the night. My route was I-85 North out of Atlanta until I reached Spartansburg, SC, where I turned west onto I-26, which eventually became I-40 in Asheville, NC. On Sunday, I'll briefly check out Asheville before venturing into Great Smokey Mountains National Park. On US 441.

I meant to mention this the other day when I was driving on US 41, but I was driving and Ramblin' Man by the Allman Brothers Band came over the XM, and it immediately became the third song on the Jon Sheldon Across America soundtrack, since it has that great line "I was born in the back of a / greyhound bus / driving down highway 41." Its just another perfect road song.