By Tabitha Bozeman
Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year is right around this weekend corner. Time moves differently during this holiday season, and it can be rejuvenating and disorienting at the same time. Christmas orients time backward, New Year’s forward, and children’s birthdays anchor it in real time–especially when they fall right in the middle of the holidays.
Our youngest was born on December 22nd. I’ll never forget keeping a minute by minute log of every feeding, nap, diaper change and snuggle she had her first 24 hours in my attempt to convince the doctor that I did in fact know what I was doing as a fourth time mom of a newborn. I had a 12 year old, 5 year old, and 2 year old waiting for Santa, and I was not going to miss that. On Christmas Eve morning, we were released from the hospital to drive home with our Christmas baby. Each of my children have holiday-adjacent birthdays. These are fun, joyful, busy times, and birthdays seem to help anchor the memories because they are more than an annual celebration. Birthdays are moments to celebrate the person, but also to truly recognize who each child is, regardless of the holiday. Even the busiest days slow down a little when it is time to sing happy birthday.
This year, we dragged Olivia’s birthday out a little, and that road trip we had planned? It was a blast. We woke up that morning, packed a bag of snacks, and piled into the car. We drove to Rome, GA and found the exact spot on Berry’s campus where one scene was filmed. At this point, the girls were not fully sold on the idea of our trip. There was plenty of “I could die of embarrassment because my parents are so cringe” energy at this stop. But, being the dedicated-to-family-day-trip parents that we are, we pushed through, even getting pics with the birthday girl’s Eleven and Demogorgon Carebears. From Berry’s historic Ford buildings, we moved on to the Creel House. This Second Empire Victorian mansion in downtown Rome, GA, is iconic and immediately recognizable to any Stranger Things fan. My husband and I have the parent street cred of personally knowing one of the home’s previous owners, which helped mitigate our cringiness into slightly less irritating parental-cool capital. At this point, I was showing off my parallel parking skills with aplomb, and not impressing the 16 year old one bit.
We hopped back in the car after posing the Carebears, Flat Stanley style a friend pointed out, in front of the mansion, and were off to our next stop. Fayetteville, GA was where a couple of the main characters’ homes were filmed, and we found those and grabbed quick pics from the street. Olivia recognized the setting of another well-known scene where the boys ride their bikes down the street, and another where ELeven flipped the vans that were chasing them. As we road down the same street in our car, her excitement was a lot of fun to witness.
Next up was the Abandoned Lab in Atlanta. A tragic accident happened the day before we went on our road trip, so I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to see this stop. But, when we pulled up, a security guard waived us on up to the fence line, saying we could get closer. This is the stop that started getting the girls really excited about the trip–mostly because while we were there posing Carebears in a tree and grabbing pictures several other carloads of fans pulled up. We met a family traveling up from Florida and took turns snapping pictures for one another, and navigating the mini traffic jam as we all tried to leave at the same time.
East Point, GA is the place to find the Abandoned Mill and Billy’s car. Olivia and I were the only ones willing to hop out because the Mill is now a bar, and there was quite a bit of traffic for a Saturday morning. But, not to be deterred, she and I got some epic pictures in front of Billy’s blue 1979 Chevy Camaro (and the Carebears got a photo op on the hood).
Jackson, GA is where the downtown Hawkins scenes were filmed, and that was our next destination. It was absolutely worth the drive. (On our way into town, we even stumbled on a Buddhist monastery similar to the one we found once in Soddy Daisy, TN! More photo ops were had.) The Jackson town square was decorated for Christmas and all of the Stranger Things spots were hyped up and decorated to the max. They even had Hopper’s 1980 Chevy Blazer parked on the square! We had the most fun exploring all of the cool props, checking out the murals painted everywhere, walking through the Upside Down, and even getting inside the Pizza Delivery van from Season 4.
On our way home, we stopped and ate at Tiffany’s Kitchen in Lithia Springs, GA. This is where the Benny’s Burgers scenes were filmed for Stranger Things, and we got pics of Olivia sitting exactly where Eleven sat. The food was tasty diner fare, and our waitress was Tiffany’s sister. She was very kind even at the late hour, wishing Olivia a happy birthday and sharing some fun filming tidbits with us.
After our late dinner, we still had an hour and a half to drive home. The girls were worn out, and I was a passenger princess for the last leg of the drive. I took the opportunity to look through the pictures we’d taken, and back at some baby pics of our birthday girl. It was a whirlwind day, but an unhurried one, crossing time zones twice and enjoying the slow dawning of recognition on Olivia’s face as she recognized each place we stopped. Sometimes in the middle of the holidays, days like this one are the best moments for truly appreciating where we are in our timelines. We don’t always need jam packed schedules and calendar countdowns–sometimes we just need a child getting taller in the back seat on a birthday trip.
