SE Roadtrip Day 6: Macon, GA 2012

We didn't plan on going to Macon, Georgia, but our next planned stop Jacksonville, Florida is 5.5 hours from Atlanta, so that meant either waiting until James was close to bedtime and getting to Jacksonville really late, or going part of the way during his second nap of the day.  Macon seemed like a logical choice because we'd heard of Macon before and it was clearly on the way.  The next issue was what to do in Macon.  We were in luck. Macon is home to the Ocmulgee National Monument, home of the "earthworks" of Native Americans who lived in the area more than a 1000 years ago.

Me in front of the Ocmulgee burial mound

Believe it or not, this is not my first mound visit. In 2009, my parents and I traveled to Miamisburg, Ohio on a super intense 20-hour roadtrip of our on to try on my wedding dress at the designer's shop with no other stops or sights.  Between fittings we went to the Miamisburg Mound and my dad and I climbed to the top.  I had already been thinking of that trip because we'll be going to Ohio for my second time on this trip, but coming across my second mound was a surprise. 

But this site has a whole series of mounds, and includes an "Earth Lodge" you can enter and listen to a recording explaining what the Native Americans did there.  So we did that, and after letting James run around outside for a few minutes, we were ready to go.

Kevin about to duck into the Ocmulgee Earth Lodge

Ocmulgee Earth Lodge

James favorite part of the day is anytime he gets to run around outside

So we head into Downtown Macon to grab dinner and kill some time. Macon was pretty dead for a Wednesday after work. The town looks nice enough, with cheerful pink flowers spray-painted on the corners and cute little shops, but lots of the stores looked like they had gone out of business a while ago.  We picked a sandwich and coffee shop from Yelp, and it was great.   Roasted Cafe and Lounge turned out to be a hipster coffee shop which was very odd for us to find in Macon, but the people were nice, the coffee was good, and there was free WiFi.  We got delicious vegetarian sandwiches because we were still in a bit of a meat coma from the BBQ we ate in Atlanta for lunch.  All in all, Macon worked out pretty well for us so it earned a blog post.

Downtown Macon

Hipster coffee shop in Macon, Roasted Cafe and Lounge

Bonus cute photo of James in Macon