We started back to Houston from Alpharetta today. Just south of Montgomery, AL is an enormous Hyundai manufacturing plant. Every time we pass it we say that it would be neat to take the tour. It is hard to book a tour because they are very popular. Yesterday, however, Ginny checked the web site and found there were some openings for the noon tour today, so she booked them. The drive from Alpharetta is only about three hours, but we left at 5 am central time (6 am Atlanta time) in order to beat the rush hour traffic which is awful. So we hauled into the area about three hours before the tour was to start. What to do???? Well, we headed for McDonalds. You can laugh, but we like McDonald's. Besides, there is free WiFi. So we spent a couple hours sitting in the restaurant. I worked on my pictures and Ginny worked on her scrap book. It was fun. We got a quick sandwich before heading out to the Hyundai plant.

The plant tour was really good. A new car rolls off the line every minute. It is a very complex process. A car takes about 18 hours from start to finish. The automation was something to behold. We thought the robot welders were pretty neat. When a car comes off the line, it goes on a two mile test drive to make sure everything works as planned.

We had visited the Harley Davidson plant in Kansas City, MO. That was interesting, but the Hyundai plant was an order of magnitude bigger. I would like to go back again some time.

We drove on after the tour and decided to spend the night in Baton Rouge. It was late and there was a hell of a storm going on, so prudence dictated we stay the night, have some wine and start fresh in the morning for the remaining 4.5 hour drive to our house.