Vaguely Vagabonds: Kennesaw

Slept til about 12 or 1. Got up, met Josh's sister Rebekah. She seems pretty cool. Had some tea, hot chocolate... showers.... (seperately)... all the normal things people do in strange cities with new people.

After a bit, we headed out with Josh to a coffee shop called Cool Beans. Pretty sweet place. Free wifi. Got some coffee, sat out back and discussed many important things such as politics, school, and the purpose of belly-dancers. OK, maybe not the belly-dancer thing. And maybe I didn't talk that much. I mostly listened to Josh and Andy talk. I did throw a few cents in here and there. Then the cold set in and we moved inside. Perused through a copy of Creative Loafing I believe it was called. Quite an interesting bit of reading about all the current happenings around here.

Bit of interest for at least one of you readers... Gillian Welch and David Rawlings were performing this evening, in Atlanta I think. But it was like 4pm by then, and it just wouldnt have been tooo feasible. Gonna try to hit the music scene in the next couple days maybe though.

So then we decided to head over to..... not sure of the name of the park but its where Kennesaw Mountain is. So we went hiking to the top of that. AWESOME views from up there.

But Josh just got back with some Chinese takeout, so I have to finish this later....

Sweet moses. Chinese takeout. crazy. we had rice, sesame chicken, fried dumplings, and beef and broccoli. wow. very interesting food. I'm not much for chinese, but this was pretty good. except that I could NOT get the food to stay on my freaking chopsticks!!! ok, so this WAS my first time using chopsticks, but I didn't realize it was gonna so hard. All I was trying to do was pick up some rice... but NOOOO, my chopsticks start moving out every stinking direction. They were actively working against me. Josh and Andy were on their second helpings, and here I am trying to get my third bite of rice. I finally got the hang of it, though. sorta. not really. But I never resorted to a fork. I should get points for perseverance or something at least.

Ok, where was I?

Ah, yes, Kennesaw Mountain. Pretty sweet I have to say. Where Sherman got destroyed, as Josh informed us. The man seems knowledgeable about a great many things. So we moved on to Little Kennesaw i think it was called, and then Pigeon Hill? Can't remember. Something like that. Scenery was awesome. But what was amazing was how quiet it was there. I mean, we were like in middle of town, granted its a big park, but still, it was cool. No sounds except for planes passing over. Quite relaxing.

Finally, we decided to head back, as the sun was setting, and we had been out long enough to have missed most of rush hour traffic. Took the long way back, around the bottom of the mountain. Got back to the visitor center around 6:45 or so, fairly dark. We figured we'd be the last people out, as the park was probably closing soon.

As we came to find out, the park was ALREADY closed, and everyone, even the employees were gone and all the roads were gated. So we couldn't drive out. And there were no other roads leading out of the park.

Sort of a dilemma we found ourselves in, as you can imagine. Here we are. Daylight's gone, and so are all the people. We have our car, but no way out. The road is closed off by a big iron gate, and there are big wooden fences around the edge of the property.

We searched along the fence near the front gate, trying to see if there was another way to get out. It turns out the fence stopped on one side, near where the woods started, in a deep gully. But whether or not the car could make it up such a steep incline was questionable. And the traffic on the road was pretty heavy.

We considered the option of calling someone to come get us. Or getting out ourselves.

We decided to go for it. Josh and Andy decided to wait there, figuring the less weight in the car the better.

First, I had to jump the curb to get out of the parking lot, and got it into position near the road. All done without the lights so as not to attract unwanted attention. And all the time hoping no cops happened by.

Finally the traffic let up for a bit, I flicked the lights on, drove down the enbankment from the parking lot, slowed as I neared the road, and gunned it up the incline, trying to stay away from the really steep part, and at the same time not hit the fence. I really didn't want to flip the car over on top of the fence.

Thankfully I made it without incident, and pulled back around for Andy and Josh. Definitely made the hike worth it. My retelling doesn't really do it justice, but here's the video Andy shot of it. It was dark on my computer but, for some reason its like totally black on YouTube. It's almost not worth putting on here cuz you cant see anything. oh well.