Day 24 - 9 Oct: Montgomery, AL, to Atlanta, GA

After a delightful hotel breakfast, including fresh waffles made by ourselves on their awesome waffle-making machine, we made our way to the Dexter Parsonage, where Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, lived during the 1950s.

There's a tiny museum and the house he and his wife lived in when they were first married and as they started their family, including much of their furniture. There's also a plaque to mark the spot that a bomb landed on the front porch in 1956, during the Bus Boycott. A brief but interesting look at a piece of history.

From there we went to find out more about the importance of that period and what had come before by taking in the Rosa Parks Museum. It's split into two sections, one looking at the preceding ~120 years, including slavery, the Civil War and the various legal attempts to challenge segregation, and the other focussing on the events around the Bus Boycott itself, and how it all unfolded.

Both were extremely interesting and informative, and very well done. The former is designed more for kids, and comprises a 'time machine' immersive installation of a bus which travels through time to specific events. We shared the ride with a big group of schoolkids just a bit younger than Finley, and it was interesting to hear their reactions and then to hear the tone of the follow-up exercises they did with museum staff. I was very pleasantly surprised to find it all very honest and frank, and not shying away from the difficult truths that the area still faces.

I was also pleased to see credit given to all the other people who had made a stand against segregation before Rosa Parks. While she was the catalyst for the boycott and real change, and has justifiably gone down in history as 'the mother of the civil rights movement', there were many before her who paved the way, such as Claudette Colvin, the first person arrested in Montgomery for resisting bus segregation, nine months before Rosa Parks.

All in all it was a comprehensive history lesson, and one that I really hope the boys remember, as I'm sure they will with their already keen interest in the subject.

From there we got on the road. We had a longish drive to Atlanta ahead of us, and didn't leave Montgomery until lunchtime.

With good roads, not too much traffic and only a couple of quick stops, we made it to Buckhead, a suburb in north Atlanta, by 5pm...or so we thought. Hadn't accounted for passing into the next time zone.

We're staying in the gorgeous townhouse of one of Ruth's former bosses at Coca-Cola in Sydney, Angus, who has been here in Atlanta for a few years but has just moved away. It was a shame we missed him and his family but they generously offered us their place to stay in - and it's AWESOME!

Went out for a bite to eat in the local Italian...