Jimmy and I just returned from a quick trip to Atlanta, Georgia. The weekend’s focus was to attend a concert, then we filled in the remaining time shopping, exploring, relaxing, and eating.
The original purpose of the trip was to see Queens of the Stone Age at the Fox Theater in the midtown area of Atlanta. Since the concert was on a Friday evening, we decided to take the day off of work to give ourselves plenty of time to arrive in Atlanta. Our hotel was across the street from the Fox, and when we arrived, there were a bunch of touring buses lined along the street adjacent to the theater. Was Josh Homme in one of them or are those buses for the two opening bands (Phantogram and The Armed) or perhaps their support crews?
My cousin Kevin told me that the theater was a fantastic venue, so we decided to make it an early dinner to get into the doors of the Fox with plenty of time to wander around. After enjoying a small, but delicious meal at the Publik Draft House, we entered into the very old Fox Theater (built in the 1920’s). The volunteers encouraged us to look around, and told us we were in for a treat since one of their longest volunteers was working that evening. And she was correct, I really enjoyed talking to the one gentleman who has volunteered there for 35 years.
Just before 7 p.m. the first of the two opening bands got started up. I found the first band to be rather silly. They seemed to try too hard to be “cool” in attempting to throw equipment around the stage. The next band was really good, but they could not compete with the splendor of the show provided by the Queens of the Stone Age who was on stage for a solid two hours. Towards the end of the show, I heard one of the greatest comments heard at a concert: “We are not going to do any of B*S* encore with going backstage and coming out several times keeping you all guessing. We are going to play three, no make that four more songs!” It was pretty funny, and in some ways, it reminds me of a parent telling their kid that they will leave the playground in 5 minutes. Anyway, they put on a great show and made this special trip to Atlanta well worth it. (here is a review)
Hah, on a side note, we were certainly in a minority age group, being some of the few people over fifty in the crowd.
With the main purpose of the trip wrapped up, we had a free schedule for Saturday. In classic Sondra and Jimmy style, we started out the day with a long walk/run. Starting off at our hotel, we headed north to Piedmont Park, then took the BeltLine Trail back down to Ponce, where we turned west back to the hotel, completing a four-mile loop.
Since we were in a big city, and we have our backpacking trip planned for April, we thought we would take advantage of visiting a large REI store. I have found that there is a difference in REI stores. The biggest example is the comparison of the Jacksonville, FL and the Tallahassee, FL locations. In 2018 & 2019 we purchased a fair amount of our backpacking gear from the Jacksonville location, which was the closest to us at the time. REI recently opened up a Tallahassee store, however, I was a little disappointed in the amount of backcountry backpacking gear that they had. So, I attempted to do a little research to see which is best or largest for backpacking supplies, but it appears that they had at least four stores that had good reviews for in this area.
We chose to take small roads across town to the REI of our choice, enjoying seeing new roads to us in the Atlanta area. Then it was fun to just wander around the store and to look for items on our shopping list. The painful part was paying the bill at the end of our visit. Jimmy purchased the two pairs of shoes, and we picked up some light-weight galley gear for our backpacking trip, so our bill was not small. There are still quite a few items on our shopping list to get ready for that trip, but we will spread out those purchases over the next few months.
After leaving the store we found a cool little hole in the wall lunch place (Waikikie Hawaiian BBQ) and split a meal before finding a small park to test out his new hiking shoes. The Daniel Johnson Nature Preserve is a green space wrapped around a small creek ravine in the middle of a residential neighborhood. These types of parks are nice little gems in the middle of an urban area.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent relaxing as I plowed through a Stephen King book back in our hotel room. For dinner on Saturday, we started out with a long walk just to check out midtown before landing at Rreal Tacos. The team there were so fast and friendly. Jimmy and I enjoyed talking to them while we ate our meal and drank our margaritas at the bar. Since it was still early, we walked over to an Irish pub (Fado) for one last night cap before walking back to our hotel, ending the day with over 18k steps recorded on my watch.
This might be our last “vacation” before retiring in October. I believe both did a great job of soaking it all in. We are now down to 8 weeks left in our apartment lease!
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