There are a couple of things which are very true (and have been said before):

1. Yellowstone is beautiful. Grand Teton is even more picturesque. Yellowstone is very diverse: It has wildlife, beautiful woods and fresh water, but also vulcanism which appear like gates to hell, canyons (yes, multiple) and waterfalls.
2. You should not plan to spend only a day there (which is possible in many other parks, but not here).
3. The area appears sometimes crowded, but when leave the parking lot areas, you will find yourself quickly alone.



This is what we did and liked
* Some horseback and pony riding (Hannah and Elli)
* Watch in awe into the deep, colored pools of hot water
* Do some hiking (usually around 5 miles a piece since Hannah and Benni had to be carried) in the morning
* Seeing wildlife: Bisons were everywhere, especially between Canyon and Lake. Moose and Elk were visible along the road (although I cannot tell them apart at longer distances). Yeah, we ran into bears during hikes. This was somewhat scary. It is different to see a bear from the car along the road or bumping into a bear family in the woods... Also, deer are not necessarily put off by Benjamin crying, instead there were seemingly curious at that.



This is what I regret to not having done
There are some things which are hard to do with the kids, like:
* Go for longer hikes. Such as a 20 mile loop through death canyon and granite canyon. Map I read that an iceaxe may be required even in July to cross the pass.
* The Yellowstone NP has a very remote area called Thorofare in its southeastern corner. The trail is sometimes more 30 Miles away from the nearest street.
* Go for more swims in the fantastic mountain lakes
* Get up very early and watch wildlife
* Being able to make a selection from 500 fotos. All of them are here All pictures online (These are the size-reduced versions).

Something about the trip in general: We had direct flights at regular hours from ATL to Jackson Hole.

The route looked as follows:


View Larger Map

or as a link:

Our route

In general, it was quite difficult to find hotels etc. It is also pricey ( I think I said that) but summer in that area is short; some roads will close again in October or even September. So we had to move around a bit, during the whole duration we stayed at five different locations. The trip as planned was good, couple of remarks and potential improvements:
1) Staying in the parks (Yellowstone) is much preferred over staying in Jackson, Gardiner and the like (we have not been to West Yellowstone)
2) We all liked Cody. "The Cody" was a very nice hotel, Buffalo Bill History Center, and Rodeo provided enough things to do.
3) Flagg Ranch ("ideally situated between Grand Teton and Yellowstone") was good (both Cabins and the friendly work-and-travel staff). But for families some of the places in Grand Teton (Jackson Lake Lodge or Colter Bay) looked even better due to its locations and amenities.

Some more highlights and pictures to follow, I think.

We are escaping from the Heat in Georgia (35 degress centigrade plus high humidity) and are within the Yellowstone area. Yellowstone and Grand Teton are somewhat hard to reach; and so this is one of the parks I have not had the chance to go previously. In addition, there is a direct flight from Atlanta to Jackson Hole which seemed to make this adventure bearable even when taking the little kids with you.

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We have finally received our furniture. Some things which we have been warned about turned out to be false in our case:
1. You are not always in a holding loop when calling Comcast.
2. The contractor delivering the furniture were exactly on time, the company doing the move was very responsive and reliable.
3. The people unloading our container (Imagine a big truck carrying a single standard shipping container saying "Hamburg Sued" parking in front of a very standard suburban american house) were careful and knew their stuff. They knew equally well why the Dallas Mavericks will not succeed and that the Spurs are going to win game 7 on the road (they did).

Some things were true:
1. Comcast needed two tries to come to the house, so far I have been unable to get a definitive answer as to what the connection fee and the monthly rate really is. I called at least three times, and got never the same answer.
2. The actual transfer of the furniture did not take 3 or 4 weeks, but rather 6-7 weeks. We have been warned about that. But, everything has been packed really well, nothing broke (as far as I can tell up to now).
3. There is no magician in the movers team reassembling the furniture easily. We were skeptical, but let them try on a very simple bed. I admit this was not easy (screws and wood not always being perfectly paired) but the team failed here. So I thanked them and re-assembled the stuff myself. At least I have some idea how it should like then.

Finally an advice when re-assembling your IKEA stuff: Get your internet connection first! I looked up the instructions on the IKEA site and had a much better time from that moment onwards.

... is about the first things we did in our new house. Peachtree City is famous for its golf cart paths, which can be used for walking, biking, strollering, and rollerblading as well. You can easily get lost on the network, it is an almost independent overlay to the street map. So, a GPS does not help much. We have been told that people, when going by golf cart all the time, tend to get lost with a car -- or worse, using the cart paths for driving a full-size car by accident.

Some experimental / analytic research about the cart path system.

So, here is our beauty:

One of my preconceptions is that you don't want to mess with your phone or internet service provider. A corollary could be that this holds true in the US and Germany equally. So, if you are a simple customer like me, I have some recommendations.

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This is how it looks like if you go up I85 from the ATL Airport to through Atlanta downtown towards Buckhead.

So, don't let the planes distract you: Up to three might land in parallel:

I85 merges with I75 for the downtown connector. Looking at the ATL skyline from the south can be impressive:

After going through the Grady curve and passing the Varsity I85 and I75 split again:

Although not the greatest drive, it is nice to see Dresden Drive (and Dresden Elementary, Dresden Park, Dresden Creek etc.) in northern Atlanta:

Many things have been happening again. We (as a family) are out for an adventure, so we decided to move the whole family to Atlanta, GA. Everything went smooth, these were the steps taken:

1. Make a big fare-well party. This worked out very well, thanks to the staff of the Treibhaus in Dresden-Striesen. Nice buffet, everything taken of for us (including doggie-bags for the considerable remainder of the food). Oh, they do not seem to have a web site. BTW, Ronald the DJ and tireless dancing instructor, if you are reading this: I forgot half the steps already :-(


2. Have a company take care of packing and sending off your things.


3. Move to a interim apartment (much preferred over a hotel) until your flight leaves and the remaining beaucratic obstacles have been taken (they were only few, if you have web access |and are used to do many things online).


4. Have someone deal with the kids. We had Hannah in Kindergarten all the time plus aunt Christiane babysitting when required (which was almost always)


5. Pick a Sunday for your actual flight. This went very well: Left the house at 6:30 in Germany, landed in Atlanta around 4 pm local time (which would be 22:00 german time), expected the worst on immigration, customs and security (if you ever entered the US through ATL you know what I mean), so this was just slightly better than expected. But Hannah did great and Benni slept solidly.

During the next days Elli, Benni and Hannah adjusted to life here and the apartment in particular. Every day provides something to discover, and until everyone is doing fine.

Living in an apartment, even in Buckhead, is not very family-friendly, though. So we are checking houses in the suburbs, like this:.

Hannah is looking forward to going to local day care, speaks some english already ("Hi", "Bye bye", "Doggie") and adapts very quickly. Check this:


Last weekend, while my chess team Schachfreunde Berlin accomplished the promotion to First Bundesliga (last year we bit the dust after 10 years in what used to be the strongest chess league in the world) I was practicing my Tennis game in one of the many free and well-maintained public courts
View Larger Map.

Later on we enjoyed life in Centennial Park.

Elli and Hannah also went to see the Georgia Aquarium.

So, life is good. Last week even a colleague paid me a visit in ATL which we visited for semi-private reasons. Now the rest of the family just got back from seeing another family + kid in PTC, so I have to stop now...

Now what is that supposed to mean? Answer below.
It has been a busy time. I have seen houses in PTC, landed near the White House at Washington Ronald Reagan airport:


View Larger Map and went to lunch at one of Atlanta's well known burger place and bar, the Vortex.

I also went to pick up a new desktop PC at Fry's, an electronic superstore here. (Similar to Mediamarkt and friends in Germany, and even more similar then I thought) I did not have time to build something with Dell (as I would have liked). So - what is the deal? I am quick to point out different attitudes in customer orientation between Germany and the US, but this time things were different or rather they were not. I unpacked the thingy, ready for the Vista install party. This HP (HP a6332f Desktop (AMD64x2 6000+, 3GB, 640GB, Vista Premium)) comes with wireless keyboard and mouse of which the keyboard did not want to work. So, cursing a bit, off to a second trip to the Fry's at Duluth (google map). I brought the transmitter and the keyboard, thinking of a quick replacement (maybe upgrade of some sort) accompanied by an excuse of how embarrassing all this is to the store etc. Nothing can be further from the truth. I will spare you the details, but it took me almost an hour and only the store manager finally approved the exchange and was as reasonable as I expected from the beginning (part of the problem being that I did not bring the mouse). I almost lost faith in the country as such. Please note that a set of keyboard + mouse + receiver is around $22...

Back in Atlanta a couple of challenges were waiting. I have changed my apartment to the Manor. Then, two days after my arrival I applied for key to everything, almighty Social Security Number (aka Número de la Seguridad Social, aka SSN).

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The voluminous belly of Elli was well hidden under her wedding dress. On January 5 (a bit ahead of schedule, estimated date was January 8) Benjamin (full name is Benjamin Richard Borriss) was born.


Everything went very smooth, the boy weighs, looks and behaves the same as his sister Hannah (who is the proudest sister on the planet and still ;) loves her brother very much):

.

Except for Benni's dark hair (Hannah's blonde) it is not trivial to tell the baby-shots apart.

Yes, Mama is proud as well as I am.

Some new developments kept me quite busy. Back in Germany many things needed to be taken care of. There was one thing, which -- although very nice -- I would be reluctant to do again in the near future: Yes - we did it and got married on December 20, 2007. The chosen date was not only a good choice for, ahem, tax reasons. It was in fact a gorgeous day with a gorgeous bride:


I would like to thank thank all our guests for making this a really nice experience. We did not allow too much time for preparations, but given that it was a highly pleasing experience. (We went to several holiday parties in the recent past and I was always put off a bit by the planning effort required). But everything was easy, total preparation time: Four weeks. The Standesamt Goetheallee is a beautiful villa located in the one of the best living areas of Dresden. We chose to have four pieces of music played by two young artists who did a very good job: First, we had the theme from the original cinderella movie "Tri orísky pro Popelku", continuing czech with Smetana's Vltava (Moldau), satisfying our memories with Cats ("Memory") and closing off with gospel "Oh happy day".



A highlight and definitive recommendation was our friendly horse drawn carriage. It was a pleasure to have them here and to ride with them. Does have more style than using limo, doesn't it?



We had most of our guests for lunch at a greek restaurant which was a disappointment. You can tell if you are asked for 10 Euro cash advance (which was never seen again). We made up for that two days later at a greek restaurant in Hohen-Neuendorf (north of Berlin) where we got lots of delicious food, attentive service, and more. But if you are looking for something here in this area (Dresden-Striesen), try The Kolibri.

I like those best:

Whether you go to heaven or hell, you have to change planes in Atlanta referring to Hartsfield-Jackson airport, home of Delta, ranked World No. 1 in terms of passenger traffic. Find here the 2004 ranking (Frankfurt was at #8). (Update: forgot about the mightier source wikipedia. Thx Michal.).

Of certain fame is Spaghetti Junction. Wikipedia tells me that it had replaced the old cloverleaf-type exchange. Patriots note that the first cloverleaf in Europe opened in 1936 which actually was Schkeuditzer Kreuz in Eastern Germany.

Everything there is to know can be found here:
ATL driver slang, I discovered that when looking up Jesus Junction which I pass most days.

In terms of traffic volume, the Downtown Connector, a joint path carrying traffic from both I75 and I85 through downtown, is hard to beat. More than 300.000 vehicles per day (for comparison, Dresden has about 250.000 registered cars total) cause the 16-lane-wide motorway to fill up heavily. Northbound is usually much worse than southbound.

Finally, I'd like to mention the intelligent transportation system which delights you with the information that due to an accident five left lanes are blocked. This never ceases to amaze me since where I come from, blocking the five left lanes would not leave anything usable.

I am spending most of my time these days in Georgia's capital Atlanta. Got some generous spot to live and a fun job. On a visit to impressing Georgia Dome last Monday I discovered that the struggling Falcons can use any support they can get.

On the negative side, commuting is sometimes a bit slow.

On our vacation in north-east Germany we used the time where the weather did not suggest a day at beach for short trips. First one was to Meeresmuseum Stralsund which has been a favourite of my childhood. It is still good, of course -- but avoid to visit on a rainy Sunday in the middle of the holiday season. Every second visitor seems to go there. If the Meeresmuseum parking garage is full and traffic is jammed back to the roundabout, just turn around. Come back later or go some 20 kilometers south to Gristow [Google Map].

The local Naturerlebnispark is right at the B96 and has plenty of entertainment for kids on a very large area. We used a horse-drawn carriage to see almost all of it; feeded pigs and goats, spent time on the playground and so forth. Everything at very, very reasonable prices and just a 10 minute drive from Greifswald.



They do not advertise very much, so you are likely to meet local families and groups of children from kindergarten and elementary school.



IMO nothing tops the beaches at Greifswalder Bodden, so give it a try, please.