It was pretty much a long boring drive, but we did make a detour in Marietta to go to the Marietta Diner, which the Marine had seen featured on the Food Network's Diners, Drive-ins &
Dives show. The Marine had Beef Stroganoff as it was one of the meals reviewed by Guy Fieri, and the Biologist (a vegetarian) had a meatless version of the Sloppy John sandwich. Very tasty, but this place was hopping! Apparently, it's quite popular with the locals! After dinner, we headed a bit further north to the hotel where we had reservations. Although the balloon festival started this evening, by the time we got to Marietta, it was dark and too late to head to the event. If only we had known what fate awaited us on Saturday, the Biologist may have tried to get off work a little earlier so we could go to the festival today instead!So, dark and early on Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel and headed west to the
small (and by small I mean miniscule) town of Menlo where the festival was being held. The balloons were scheduled to take flight at 6am, and we got there at 5am. Needless to say, we were only the 2nd or 3rd car to arrive. Everyone else apparently knew better and slept in a bit later than we did. However, we didn't mind because the predictions for rain this morning had not come true and there was no sign of rain on our drive. At about 6:30am, some trucks and vans with balloon baskets on the back finally started to arrive. Yea! We were finally going to see multiple hot air balloons launching. We were so excited. Well, at least as excited as one can be when they get up at 4:00 in the morning. So we're waiting... and we're waiting... and as daylight breaks we notice that fog is rolling in. We didn't see any fog on 
the drive to Menlo so we were a little surprised, but didn't think much about it. That is, until we realized that the morning launch was going to be cancelled because of it. Oy vey, will we ever see hot air balloons launching?! Well, not today anyway. We did have a nice chat with some of the balloonists though and they told us how the Energizer Bunny hopped on the launch field before taking flight the previous evening and how two Bumble Bee balloons hugged each other with velcro arms as they took flight. Darn it! Better luck next time. Well, at least we did get a new icon for attending a Hot Air Balloon Festival.So after being deflated by the balloon launch cancellation, we took a leisurely drive south along the back roads of Georgia and made our way over to Dothan, Alabama. Did you know that according to the Guinness Book of World Records Dothan has the smallest city block? No kidding, they really do. We managed to snap several photos of it just before the hordes arrived for a graduation ceremony at the nearby convention center.
We spotted several Alabama Historical Markers, as well as a Bartram Trail Marker, along the way and stopped to check them out. Just adjacent to the Bartram Trail Marker was the adorable little Oswichee Baptist Church so we had to stop and take photos of it too. There was a nice woman there who invited us to the church potluck on Sunday. What a friendly place!We passed through Alabama fairly quickly then made our way south to Appalachicola, Florida, and enjoyed checking out the Gulf of Mexico for a little while before making our way to Tallahassee for the night. After a nice dinner at the Macaroni Grill (we don't have one of these in Jacksonville), we made it an early night (remember, we did get up at 4am this morning!). Then we made our way home on Sunday. Rascal and Scamp sure were glad to see us, although Rascal gave us the evil eye when we removed his all-you-can-eat smorgasbord.
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