Dispatches From The Red States (Concluded)...

Thursday (23rd), we took the two older kids to Six Flags' American Adventure in Marietta which is pretty much a kiddy park. But Ryan and Justin had lots of fun. Unfortunately, the city blew a transformer early in the afternoon toward the end of our visit theres and at that point there was only one ride that worked - the one that didn't need power:

But we had pretty much had our fill up to the point anyway.

Later in the evening, Cliff and Lorie treated us to dinner at P.F. Chang's - wonderful Chinese cuisine - and dessert at The Cheesecake Factory. Having been sufficiently stuffed with food, we headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

Friday (24th) was a "packing" day in preparation for the drive back. Cliff and I played with the kids at the hotel pool while the girls went out to lunch and shopped. I ended up with a cast-iron dinner bell that somehow will manage to get attached to my house.

The last night in Georgia was a barbecue at Lorie's mom's house. We got to meet the girlfriend of Lorie's brother, Grant. Her name is Bogdana, but everyone calls her Bogi. She's originally from Bulgaria and she's here pursuing her Ph.D in economics from Emory University. A really nice girl, she put her au pair experience to good use with the boys. And lastly there were the goodbyes all around.

And of course endless picture taking, copies of which I need to email back to Georgia asap. Here is my youngest, Kevin, with his Auntie Lorie:

At that point, the kids were starting to ask, "when are going home?" God bless 'em, they were really good that whole trip.

So the next day, with my Bush/Cheney '04 carafe filled with coffee and the van loaded up, we got on the road about 8:15am. Our stopover was again in Richmond, VA but at a different hotel. Sunday we were back on the highway headed North and after about 10 long hours (including pit stops) we hit the Connecticut border - happy to be home but missing everyone we left behind.

Hopefully, we'll be able to go back one day soon.

Previous Dispatches: Part 5, Part 4, Part 3, Part 2 & Part 1

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