We did decide to stop at Buc-ees on our way from TN and boy ohh boy what a mess that was! I know they are famous and awesome but it was just pure chaos and so busy you couldn’t hardly walk around.
We arrived to our campground without any further complications and had a nice paved pull thru site. This is an Army Corps of Engineers (COE) park- our first timing staying at one of these. We definitely stay here again. There was some confusion about gray water dumping at check in so Matt did use the shower house one time and said it was “ok” we didn’t even check out the women’s. One important thing to note is that this campground is about 30 minutes away from the nearest grocery store/restaurant /laundromat so make sure you plan accordingly. After we got camp set up and took in the view. We headed out for dinner.
Our first full day in Georgia was a “camp day” I went to the laundromat and Matt and the girls stayed at camp and hung out.
Our second day in Georgia is when the fun really started and the entire reason for going this route, it was Zoo Atlanta day.We were able to use our Wilds membership (AZA) reciprocity to get 1/2 off our admission and we were able to pack in our own lunch/drinks. We had a really nice tent area to eat in. Overall we thought the zoo was nice, small but very nice. The animals seemed so much closer then they do at Columbus Zoo. Now on to the good stuff.
In the middle of writing this blog, T-Bird came over and decided she wanted to help! Here are some pictures she took and captions she dictated. I think buying each of them their own camera was the best thing we ever did for this (and future trips) its so fun to see what they think is neat/fun and also not fill up my camera with a million pictures.
Day 3 in Georgia was another day spent in Atlanta. We went to the World of Cocoa Cola. Here is Trinity’s pictures and captions- i didn’t know we would have so much interest in guest writing!
World of Cocoa-Cola was neat. There was a “history room”, a “tasting room”, a “smelling room”, a “bottling room” and a “pop culture room”. The girls enjoyed being allowed to taste all the drinks they wanted- we don’t normally allow them to drink soda. Lyndie took two sips of 2 different drinks and switched to water followed up some Minute Maid Lemon-Aid, Trinity liked the Fanta Apple (i didn’t even know it existed) and the Sprite from Romania (tough luck getting it here). I tried a few things but ultimately decided of all the options i preferred just plain coke. Matt enjoyed tasting multiple things also but i think he preferred Coke or Mellow Yellow. Trinity was the most adventurous in tasting all the things.
When we were all done there we went back to the car and ate our picnic lunch before heading to the Georgia Aquarium. The aquarium while a member of AZA does not participate in the discount reciprocity at this time.We couldn’t get the website to work to purchase our tickets ahead of time and we ended up paying like $5/more each ticket to purchase at the aquarium and we seriously debated just not going because it was going to be so expensive but ultimately we decided to go for it and boy I’m sure glad that we did. We even messed up when we purchased the tickets and bought 5 instead of 4 and we were just going to give the ticket away to someone else walking up to buy tickets but then someone offered to buy it from us so we sold it via Cashapp right there in front of the aquarium. We finally had the right number of tickets in hand and we were on our way, but of course we couldn’t just walk right in we had to stop and take pictures with the Penguin.
Once inside we were overwhelmed with how huge and nicely done it was- We hadn’t seen the first animal or been in any exhibits yet and Matt said “this is worth it” We made reservations for the sea lion and dolphin shows as soon as we got in because we didn’t want to miss those (no photos/videos allowed during the shows) and we made a bee line to the sea lion theatre- there was some interactive learning games the kids could play while we waited for the show to start (we were about 10 minutes early) and they had this neat thing where you could have your picture taken “with an animal” and then you could either have it emailed or text to you. The Sea Lion show was pretty neat, I’m very glad we didn’t sit in the front “splash zone areas”. After the Sea Lion show we made another bee line to the dolphin show. After both shows were complete we finally started making the rounds to see the exhibits and enjoy the animals.
Lyndie declared this “The best aquarium in the world”. We would definitely go back if we find ourselves in Atlanta again. We weren’t quite finished with Atlanta just yet, traffic was looking horrendous which is par for Atlanta in the direction of camp after the aquarium but not so completely horrendous toward the original Chic Fil A, aka The Dwarf House so of course we decided to eat some dinner and check the place out which turned out to be a great idea- the traffic wasn’t awful getting there and after we ate and played outside a bit most of the awful traffic on our route back to camp had cleared.
Onward to South Carolina!