Biggs Cross Country 2017: Day 14 - Birmingham to Atlanta

Short driving day today as its only about 150 miles between these two cities. We're headed for Atlanta to the Rotary International convention. The landscape is unremarkable, heavily wooded as part of the route passes through Talladega National Forest, and the Speedway. We did get held up for about an hour due to construction. ("Mrs Mac", as our GPS is known, is amazing. I'm beginning to have 100% confidence in her. She directed us around the construction delay, but I didn't take her advice - didn't believe I should be turning off the highway. I was wrong).

Since we had the time, and Linda would have insisted on it anyway, we went out of our way just a bit to visit IKEA. I had to keep reminding Linda that our storage space in the VW is very restricted, and we still have 5 weeks to go for souvenir shopping! You cannot buy any furniture! But, we did have to buy a box of "double chocolate crisps"!

We got settled into the Hilton Atlanta, had a quick bite at the deli, then took the Rotary shuttlebus over to Centennial Park for the Ricky Skaggs concert. It was only 6:00PM and the temperature was 90 degrees. Boy, was it hot sitting in the blaring sun! After an unimpressive "warm up" duo, the Kentucky Thunder Band finally came out at about 7:45. What a great show for the next 90 minutes! Ricky is one of my heroes and he played some familiar bluegrass tunes. There was a huge crowd there - people from all over the world! We were sitting next to people from New Zealand.

Centennial Park is located across the street from the College Football Hall of Fame and the Georgia World Congress Convention Center where we will be spending much of the next few days, starting tomorrow at the opening ceremony. There are reportedly 40,000 Rotarians here!

Now that we've been on the road for two weeks (only 5 to go?!) we have developed a routine of sorts. The alarm foes off at 6:30AM. While Linda takes her shower and completed her ablutions, I either go for walk or what I call a jog/walk, or find the hotel exercise room for a 30 minute workout. By the time I get back to the room, the shower is ready. We make a light breakfast from the stuff in the cooler, or the free breakfast at the motel. Yogurt with granola, bananas, fruit cup, juice, etc. We're usually out the door by 8:30, ready to start our day! Lunch is also what ever we can find in the cooler. Its only the evening meal that we eat at a restaurant. (Although, we have entered Waffle House country!) So far, we've been eating healthy and I, at least, have been getting some exercise.

We'll be here at the Rotary event until Thursday when we head for Florida!