Marietta, Georgia- Monday, June 27, 2016

We slept in today, which was not only something we physically needed to do, but also meant that we missed Monday rush hour in Atlanta.

We had bought the City Pass for Atlanta, knowing that we might not be able to do all of the things on it.  It was advertised as 40 % off the individual admission prices, so we figured if we went to three of the sights, it would pay for itself, and anything more than that would be free.  Our fourth sight, today, was the Fernwood Museum of Natural History.  There's no way we were going to talk Julie into going to the College Football Hall of Fame, and the CNN tour didn't seem too great to the girls and just didn't seem like it was going to happen this time.

So, we probably wouldn't have thought about going to the Fernwood if it hadn't been on our City Pass, but we had a very relaxing and enjoyable couple of hours there.  We started with an IMAX movie called National Parks Adventure.  It was narrated by Robert Redford, and featured a trio of people doing some crazy things like rock climbing on Devil's Tower.   There were several "Giants of the Mesozoic", casts of dinosaur skeletons in the bright central courtyard area, and there were many fossils in the limestone floors.  We went to the main exhibit, about the geological eras and geographic regions of Georgia.  We had pizza for lunch in the cafe. There were several smaller exhibits we enjoyed, including one interesting one on "Creatures of Light," about fireflies, certain fish, and other animals that glow with their own bioluminescence.

By mid afternoon we had made our way on to Marietta and found Julie's aunt's house, where we would spend the night. She talked with her Aunt Sandy and Uncle Jim for a long time.  Scott excused himself to take a nap but was up in time for the meatloaf dinner that Aunt Sandy had prepared. Julie really liked hearing Aunt Sandy's stories about growing up with Julie's dad, and of the trouble they got in together.  She laughed when she heard Aunt Sandy tell of how they got caught playing hooky from school and of how Julie's dad had broken a neighbor's window. We went out on their screened-in deck after the sun went down, and enjoyed the landscaping of her backyard and the breeze that seemed to be warning of a coming storm.  We saw the fireflies starting to come out and went to bed.