Annnnnd…. We finally hit Atlanta.
If you’re following the blog, you’ll notice we’re lagging a bit here. Don’t worry about the timing, we’re posting in somewhat chronological order, but by the time you read this, alas, we’ve moved on.
Atlanta was to be the halfway point of our trip. Jessica’s company has a factory here and we figured we would demise two avians with the same projectile by splitting up the vacation so that she could still get some work in. Taking a full five weeks from a company is a pretty big ask, so this was the best of the options.
And, besides, it gave me a chance to catch up on some of my work and, possibly, take a couple of meetings whilst we were in one place for a while.
The place we were staying at was the Stone Mountain Manor. As you can see from the photos, this is a very large antebellum mansion with all the expected charm of the South. The proprietor, Adam, was fantastic and the stay was a welcome relief from the pack-it-in-pack-it-out routine we’d become accustomed to.
Up to this point, we’d had to deal with one huge suitcase, two small suitcases, two working backpacks, an ice cooler, and camera bags. Every night, all of that being lugged into a hotel room. Many times those rooms were on upper floors. So the chance to just move our stuff into a long-term room was something we were looking forward to, even if it was only for six days or so.
However… we still had to lug it all upstairs. Fortunately it was one floor and the stairs were those old-style wide wooden stairs. As you can see from the photos, the interior of the mansion and the grounds were beautiful. We were able to eat breakfast each morning on the porch under the gaze of a spider which had made its home on the outside of the window. It was very peaceful and relaxing.
The room was fantastic. We had only booked one of the regular rooms, but upon arrival, Adam told us he had upgraded us to one of the large rooms with the sauna jet-tub.
I’m going to repeat that: sauna jet-tub.
We’ve been on the road for two weeks. Driving. Dragging luggage, in and out of hotels. Lifting luggage back into the Jeep in some Sisyphean version of Tetris every day. And there… in the room…. A SAUNA JET-TUB!
The rest of this blog could be just about that tub. I spent every night in that tub. I loved that tub. That tub and I exchanged e-mail addresses and we now follow each other on Twitter. Heaven.
I’m also including the web address for Stone Mountain Manor here. If you want to visit the tub. It’s well worth it.
But back to Atlanta. The truth is, I didn’t spend a lot of time in Atlanta itself. I didn’t go downtown and visit and I didn’t take in the local attractions. Reason being, I’ve been to Atlanta many times. I was born in Augusta, Georgia and spent my later years in northern Florida. And, of course, my many visits to Dragoncon. For me, this was more about relaxing and decompressing; catching up on things and getting ready for the rest of the trip.
One of things that was on my list, however, was to visit some friends. Now, to be fair, the luxury of visiting everyone along our path wasn’t something we could do. I know a lot of you have asked if we were going to be in your area and to stop in and, believe me, we wanted to. Alas, those visits will have to wait. However, two of my good friends, Sophia Crawford and Jeff Pruitt, now live in the Atlanta area. Sophia is one of the owners of a coffee shop called “Ground and Pound” along with Curtis Short (shout out to Curtis!). Since I have coffee in my genetic coding it was a done deal long before I showed up. Neither Sophia nor Jeff knew I was in the area so my just showing up was a bit of a surprise. Some of you saw my previous post of a photo of me at the “Ground and Pound”. That was the first that they knew I was in the area. Sophia wasn’t working that day, which explains my comment on the photo about timing. But a day later, I was back.
As some of you know, Jeff, Sophia and I have worked together. Sophia, as an Actress/Stuntwoman and Jeff as a Stunt Coordinator/Director. It was really great to see them again. While Sophia tended to the customers, Jeff and I sat there for hours, catching up on old times. drinking some really really good java and sampling the food choices (if you like cold brew, try Sophia’s special iced brew).
And, yes, 7 out of 5 stars; definitely recommend.
But all that was during the day. When not visiting, I was on the computer, getting some work done, rewriting some stories, and catching up on business calls. The nights were spent with my sweets, as she returned from work and we headed out for dinner together. Then back to Stone Manor for a relaxing evening.
And the tub.