Fernbank Museum & CNN Center

The city of Atlanta used to intimidate me...coming from small town Indiana, the airport alone used to intimidate me. This is changing, however, for the good. The part about Atlanta that I still am not fond of is that you can find yourself in an okay part of town and in just one block that can change rapidly. I don't understand how this happens, but I'm told it's called "transitioning neighborhoods"...whatever you want to call it, I call it unnerving.

Anyway, none of that matters for our trips to the Fernbank Museum and CNN Center. Fernbank has an IMAX theatre...and, truthfully, that's the only reason to spend the time to go there on most occasions. The first IMAX movie that I ever saw was about Lewis and Clark...now, that was awesome. Seen a few since and none are as impressive as that one. However, the movie we saw just last week, "Under the Sea" was really cool. Once again, I found the movie informative, and rather upbeat...unlike two previous ones seen where it was a tongue lashing and a personal endeavor of the producers to get an environmental message out to us in a rather boring and accusational manner. General concept okay, but come on people, be nice already. You catch more flies with honey...

The boys and I enjoyed the trip to Fernbank. The main exhibit was called "A Walk Through Georgia." They reproduced several different areas of our wonderful state and helped you see the natural wonders that each of them has to offer when visited. I was mostly impressed with the Okeefenokee Swamp recreation. They even had you walking on the same type of boardwalk that truly exists at the State Park located in the heart of the "Hokee O' Swamp" (as the boys used to call it after our visit there years ago). Lots of fun memories were talked about in the short walk through this area...the only thing missing from the exhibit were the humongous spiders that one will find there. Maybe they were there and I just didn't look that hard for them not really wanting to relive that memory again. :)

Our favorite part of the acutal museum, however, was the hands-on science room. Lots of experiments for the kids (and us kids at heart) to experience. Bubbles, shadows, vision experiments, and lots of other cool stuff...and, a live animal show with a frog, lizard, and snake.

Just yesterday, then, we took a tour of the CNN Center. It really wasn't anything like I expected other than the newsroom areas. Had no idea there were restaurants and shops inside...the building itself is huge. Was told it used to be an indoor amusement park...that was interesting. The escalator takes you up 8 stories to begin the tour and only after you are on the top they tell you interesting facts about it. It's the largest free standing escalator...meaning there are no support beams under it. I had noticed that it was incredibly long and impressive looking, but to think it was designed in such a way that it supports itself without beams to the floor below is quite an accomplishment. The escalator ride was the boys favorite part and they were disappointed that they could only ride it once.

Being a person who always has a camera hanging from my wrist, you can imagine my disappointment at no photos allowed during the tour, but I totally understood the reasoning and had expected such a rule from the start. Not too much to see outside of the tour really, but we enjoyed the visit. About halfway through the tour, Tim told me, "Mom, this is cool. I thought it was going to be boring, but it's not." I'll take it. :)

Having spent the night camping out in our backyard, we were all a little spent by the end of our visit. I do believe Alex was asleep before we even were through the exit of the parking garage. Tim soon followed suit. We may be done with our attraction visits...there would be two more we could see, but I think we may cut it short and call it "a good time had by all" and be content. Time is short between now and Saturday when I leave for Alaska and we are wanting to go swimming with our neighbor's granddaughter who's visiting and I need to finish packing and getting the house ready for my absence. It won't keep itself going, so I'm going to give it a good polishing before I leave so it won't be so bad off (hopefully) when I return in a week. Positive thinking is something, right?