We are always looking for weekend getaway ideas, even more so when we see the gap of many months between larger vacations. This was no exception. We booked this pretty last minute. The weekend before we spent a good part of one day, deciding on various weekend trips and booking hotels.
The hotel we booked was the TownePlace Suites Canton Riverstone Parkway in Canton, Georgia. It's a fairly new hotel. The building (including lobby, amenities, and breakfast) is shared with a Fairfield Inn. What we did not realize going in was that this was a fully booked hotel but I'll get to that later.
We left right after work. It is about a 3 hour drive. About half-way there, we ran into some rain which turned quite heavy at time with some pretty high winds. A severe storm had popped up. It was a bit unnerving to see small debris (leaves and small branches) flying across interstate. Paul even saw a small ditch tornado. I tracked the weather warnings and radar. We had hoped to stop for dinner but we quickly realized, we needed to stay ahead of it which based on all the down trees we saw the next day was a smart move.
The rain had let up a little by the time we reached Canton so we ran into Jersey Mike's to quick grab some subs to take with us to the hotel.
Upon arriving at the hotel, there was no awning to pull under and it was raining again. Fortunately, someone pulled out of an end spot not too far from the door. Upon entering the lobby, we were surrounded by so much noise. Several groups had taken over all the various seating areas in the lobby and breakfast area. No single individual was excessively loud but there were just so many voices all at once. We waited in line and when we reached the front were assigned room 112. I have to admit, this didn't sound like a good room just based on the number and then he explained it was just down the hall around the corner. We had been assigned the closest room to the lobby.
The room was a studio king. It still seemed pretty new and so was in great condition. It was pretty cramped though like they took a standard king hotel room and decided to fit a kitchen in with the bed and bathroom. So there was no were but under the desk to put our suitcase. And the bathroom only had a spot to hang one towel (they couldn't at least install two towel hooks?). It also had the open shower design that we are seeing more often in Marriott brand hotels that we aren't all that fond of as water does get out into the bathroom area.
We later learned that there were several baseball teams in town plus a wedding and a number of people whose power was out making for a sold out hotel. Unfortunately, the noise continued into the night. We made the first call about 10:15 or so. The front desk staff indicated there was a noise curfew at 11:00 p.m. and assured us they would enforce it although they didn't see any noise problems now so weren't worried. I made the second call about 11:20. The lady who answered the call was pretty exasperated and said she would try again. At some point by midnight, it did quiet down.
The next morning we were up and ready to enjoy breakfast at 6:30 a.m. (the time the front desk told us it would be open). Unfortunately, they had told us the wrong time. Being a weekend, it wouldn't open until 7:00 a.m. and the worker handling breakfast didn't actually have it all out until closer to 7:15 a.m. Fortunately, we had some time built in so we still were able to get some breakfast before heading out.
Today's goal was to tour the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Gainesville location. We are members and make regular visits to their downtown Atlanta main garden but had never visited their Gainesville location. It was worth the drive. We were among the first to arrive. The highlight was all the butterflies as the special exhibit La Calavera Catrina. Here is a video of many of the Catrinas.
After a great morning at the gardens, we found some lunch at Whataburger before doing a little wine and liquor shopping at Total Wine. While we were eating, we got a call from the hotel who had forgotten we were staying another night (we had a split reservation with an award night on one reservation number and a paid night on another reservation number). They indicated we would need to get new keys when we returned.
When we arrived at the hotel, no one was at the front desk and another person was waiting in front of us. We waited 15 minutes before anyone came out and that was after the people in front of us knocked on the office door behind the front desk. Then as we were relaxing back in our room, the fire alarms went off. They were turned off quite quickly so we never exited the building but the fire department still did show up.
For dinner, we headed to a Mexican restaurant in the strip mall next to our hotel called 7 Tequilas Mexican Restaurant. The food was quite good and I had to try the 7 Tequilas Margarita, made with 7 different tequilas. It was quite good but very strong. They warned me I was only allowed to order one. That should have been my first warning.
Chicken Street Tacos
I finished it and was still able to walk out!
Fortunately, that evening the hotel was a lot quieter. We took our time the next morning as our first museum didn't open until 10:00 a.m. We had three museums on our agenda.
The first museum on the agenda on this day was the Tellus Science Museum, an excellent science museum associated with the Smithsonian. Our fun started in the parking lot. First with some pretty cool construction equipment and then a walk through the planets of our solar system spaced out to give you an understanding of which planets were closer and which were a long ways off.
ca. 1925 P&H Dragline Model 206 (an earthmoving machine) interchangeable attachments could turn this into a shovel, dragline, pile driver, or crane Manufacturer P&H Mining Machinery, Milwaukee, WI; Engine Type: Waukesha Gasoline
ca. 1960 Euclid Dump Truck Manufacturer: General Motors
ca. 1997 HD785-3 Komatsu Dump Truck Used in the gold mines of Nevada This truck is too big to travel on interstate. To get to Tellus, it was disassembled and moved on four flatbed tractor trailers from Nevada - one for the frame, one for the engine and transmission, one for the dump body, and one for the tires.
Their two main exhibits are a dinosaur exhibit and a travel exhibit that included everything from the first cars/motorcycles to space travel. There was also the more traditional hands on kid's exhibit that was fun even for us adults to walk through.
Before we even purchased our tickets, this amazing Foucault's Pendulum caught our eyes. The pendulum moves back and forth in the same plane. As the earth rotates under it (the pendulum doesn't rotate with the earth), it slowly knocks off each peg.
Next up was the dinosaur exhibit. They had quite a few dinosaur skeletons (molds made from bones actually found) as well as some examples of artifacts, even a few they encouraged you to touch.
Brontosaurus
Eremotherium - The Giant Ground Sloth
T-Rex
T-Rex footprint cast
Triceratops
Baby and Mom ("Lane" and "Lily") Triceratops
Pterosaurus
Protostega
Xiphactinus
Mosasaur
Elasmosaurus
Glyptodon - The Giant Armadillo
Next up was an interest exhibit about transportation.
1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen The World's First Automobile
1903 Wright Flyer A replica of the plane the Orville brothers first powered flight
EV1 with charger first modern electric car from a major automaker
Apollo I launch pad disaster
I touched a tire that flew to space in 1996 on the Atlantis mission STS-79 to and from the Russian Mir space station.
1948 Bell-47 Helicopter Originally designed for the military but is also the first helicopter certified for commercial use
The last two parts of the museum we walked through were an exhibit on stones and the layers of the earth that was quite interesting and then a room with all kinds of hands-on exhibits mostly geared towards children but we found a few intriguing ones. I didn't get any photos of them but there were some interesting hands-on exhibits about electricity and solar power.
The exhibit about stones and the earth let us make a stop at the Grand Canyon!
I like this second one better!
Our next stop was the Savoy Automobile Museum. We enjoyed a pretty good lunch in the cafeteria before wandering through the exhibits of cars. I'm handing this portion of the blog over to Paul...
1954 Plymouth Savoy This car was found on the land when the museum was built, they decided to name the museum after it!
Spirit of Speed, Linda Brunker
1903 Oldsmobile Curved Dash Runabout
America's best selling mass-produced car at the time with over 3,900 produced. It sold for $650, had a top speed of 20 MPH and 5 horsepower
1990 Chevrolet 1500 454 SS
This example was pristine and I think there was only 117 miles on the odometer!
1955 Porsche 356
They had a room full of Porsches, you will notice the current model still is obviously related to this model, styling updates have been evolutionary vs revolutionary; don't change a good thing!
1973 911 Carrera RS
Which yellow do you like better? I like the one in the foreground, the other one is too mustardy...This one had a 2.7 flat 6 like our 2014 Boxster, making 210 horsepower (vs our 265), but the car weighed over 700 lbs less at only 2,150 lbs!
2014 911 - 50 years of 911
1988 Turbo Cabriolet
What a spoiler! Love the license plate never lift!
1992 911
Can you spot the differences from the 20 year older yellow one above?
1987 959
The king of the road at the time!
2004 Carrera GT
0-60 happened in an unbelievable 3.5 seconds, a Tesla Model 3 Performance could embarrass one of these now (3.1) for about 12% of the Porsche's original MSRP which was an almost equally unbelievable $450k. Not a huge fan of the rear of the car, but the cockpit and front are cool.
Georgia Tech Solar Vehicle
I remember when this came out around 2002, the car is essentially a large aerodynamic solar panel with a very tight cockpit for one. It weighed 700 lbs and had a top cruising speed of 55 MPH.
1936 Dodge truck hood ornament and truck
Who wants to ride in the back? Could be a reason "riding shotgun" became so popular!
1949 Buick Convertible
Pocket doors on this Kaiser were pretty cool! I think this was Rebecca's favorite.
This Packard hood ornament was no joke!
A nod to our current vehicle, a Buick!
This 1958 Chevy truck was owned by Hank Williams Jr. I can see styling cues shared with my mom's first car, a 1958 Corvette!
1936 Chevrolet Standard Series FC Coupe Pickup
This was my favorite vehicle in the museum - I always like 1930s style vehicles and throw in a pickup bed that looked pretty useful, it's certainly unique, cool looking and practical! Having owned a Subaru Baja and Honda Ridgeline trucklers, this would have certainly been in my collection if I were born 60 years earlier!
It's me again, Rebecca. After exploring the Savoy Auto Museum, we had one last museum, the Booth Western Art Museum, another museum associated with Smithsonian. I have to admit when we first read about this museum, what came to mind is cowboys and western states of the United States but it was a lot more than that.
We started in the War is Hell Gallery which had a really well done exhibit about the Civil War. It included pieces about the horrors of war as well as the human side like the bartering that happened in no-man's land.
War is Hell, 2001 Mort Kunstler General William Tecumseh Sherman leaves the burning city of Atlanta, Georgia on November 15, 1864 to begin his march to the Sea. Sherman said, "I intend to make Georgia howl."
The Stainless Banner, 1984 J. N. (James Nathan) Muir
The museum also a lot of art reflecting the importance of animals in the US, landscapes of the beautiful scenery especially in the west, as well as the history of Native Americans.
There were a couple of really interesting exhibits featuring women. Women of the West featured photography by Barbara Van Cleve of life for women on ranches. We Set Our Faces Westward: One Woman's Journey 1839-1848 featured the art of Heidi Presse based on the journals of Keturah Penton Belknap about her journey first on a farm in Iowa and then on the trail to Oregon.
There was an excellent exhibit on the Presidents. In one room, they featured each president with a photo of them, correspondence from them, and information about them. In another room, they were painting all the Presidents on the wall as if they had all been in the same room together (in three centuries). This is called the Commanders in Chief Project by artist Ross R. Rossin.
We would have liked to spend a bit more time in these last exhibits but we had reached our limit of museums. I really enjoyed this museum and felt it was really well put together with excellent exhibits. Hopefully someday we can return and spend more time.
We then headed home. We had about a two and half hour drive and fortunately this drive was very uneventful. It was a bit eyeopening though to see all the down trees that were not down on our drive to Georgia Friday evening. It confirmed that we had been smart to stay ahead of the storm as much as we could Friday evening.
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