CNN Tour- Stone Mountain

My dad, brother and sister in law came into town early Saturday afternoon. They drove thru the night and made it here on very little sleep. They stayed until Monday afternoon and they had a long list of things they wanted to see and do. On Saturday we headed over to the CNN tour. It was a place that I've wanted to visit for a while and get a behind the scenes look. I majored in broadcast journalism and interned at a news station my Senior year of college. I loved the atmosphere of a newsroom and watching the reporters and anchors in action was exciting. 

Before you enter the tour, you go up this long escalator. It's the worlds longest and tallest free standing escalator. 

This is a mock up of what an anchor desk looks like with a teleprompter. The great part about these teleprompters is that a camera is located behind the words. When the anchor is reading the script, he/she is staring right at the audience. They also put as few words as possible on the screen so the person who is reading isn't scanning with their eyes. Along with the teleprompter they have a script on paper. 

When I was interning at Telemundo, I sat next to the morning anchor while he was presenting the news. At one moment, as I was looking at the teleprompter, I noticed the words had disappeared. There had been a technical difficulty and now he had to rely on the sheets of paper in front of him to get him thru the segment. At commercial break, he looked over at me and said, "That's why we have this as back-up." I learned that you must always be prepared for anything to happen. Sometimes, scripts are thrown out the window and you have to go on the fly. Those moments were the most exciting to watch. I do miss the newsroom and still feel like a little kid in candy store whenever I am in one. 

                                                              The Newsroom

                    Sitting at the anchor desk. 

                                                      Outside CNN studio

The next day was Sunday and while we attended church my family went out in the morning to the Coca Cola factory. Next on the agenda was Stone Mountain.  It had been raining that whole morning and afternoon and I wasn't sure if they were still planning on going to Stone Mountain that evening.

Stone Mountain is the world's largest exposed granite rock and it has a carving of Confederates on the side. Driving up to the site I didn't think it was that big, but as we got closer and I saw how high up I had to climb, it became almost impossible. 

My mom and I stuck together because, let's face it, we are not the most physically fit people. I think it took us a little over an hour to get to the top and once we reached it, we felt accomplished. Now, we we knew we had to make the trek down as well and I was already exhausted. At the top my dad gave us the good news! There was a trolley that took us down and we didn't have to make the grueling descent. I know, I can be a wimp about this sort of stuff.

                                                        The view was beautiful!!

At night they had a laser show, which again- the worlds largest laser show. It was really cool but at some points when the fireworks were going off the smoke would block the side of the mountain and you couldn't see the images. In spite of these small hiccups, the whole show was great. I enjoyed the country music accompanying the show. It kind of made me feel proud to be living in Georgia. The good ol' south.