Visiting Family in Minnesota and Georgia

May 2, 2025

This is going to be another family post that may be of limited interest to non-family, so feel free to skip it if you'd like. We had a busy few weeks visiting with family in two different states. After putting our camper in temporary storage, we felt very light and nimble driving to Julie's sister's house in Atlanta. It almost made us want to seek out really short bridges to drive under just because.

We spent the first few nights in Atlanta with Stephanie and Eric in their (new to them) home before flying to St. Paul to spend Easter with the kids. After gorging ourselves with pie, cheesecake, tiramisu, and more pie, we flew back to Atlanta for a few more nights. We enjoyed our time in both places, but we have to say that the weather in Atlanta beat out St. Paul, despite St. Paul having some "seasonally pleasant" weather (i.e. the sun was out and it wasn't snowing).

In no particular order (well actually they are roughly in chronological order), here are some highlights of the last few weeks.

Note: These pictures probably should not be construed as necessarily being highlights per say (although some of them are). Rather, they mostly just represent the moments that Julie had her camera nearby and decided to snap a picture. Several moments of greater significance have been lost to time due to the inconvenience of the camera location at those moments.

Rick helped solve the mystery of how to turn on the gas for the fireplace logs, only to be puzzled by the dozens upon dozens of tiny blue flames scattered all over the logs, flickering on and off (mostly off). Stephanie was not impressed, and the gas was shut down for good.

The famous Krog Street Tunnel

The tunnel's vibe was decidedly post-apocalyptic

Walking along the Atlanta Beltline

Some fun sculpture on the Beltline

Fun bar we went to

Definitely would have gotten lost if not for the excellent signage!

Quite the brazen boxing in by the jeep behind us. That's life in the city for ya.

You can tell we've moved to St. Paul by the additional outerwear layer. Just got a chuckle out of the last can of crushed tomatoes on the shelf 😉.

Does it say something about Julie that the only picture she got on Easter was of a lamb made of butter? (and Michael too)

...And the one other picture in St, Paul (besides the can of tomatoes) was of a turkey? These are rhetorical questions, so don't feel like they need answering 😉

Ah, back where it was warm and green again!

Piedmont Park in Atlanta

Eric engaged in the annual alchemy of changing a pool from green to blue

We'd like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Stephanie and Eric and our kids Andrew, Audrey, and Alan who opened their homes to us. We enjoyed our visits with all of them!

Postscript for Alan--I picked up reading the Brothers Karamazov from where I started at your house. According to the Kindle, I only have 40 hours and 7 minutes left.

There is a google group email list which can send you an email when there is a new blog post. Instructions for signing up here: Subscribe OR directly join here: Google Group