Georgia has three of my favorite places to visit. They're all far from Atlanta, and all relatively uncrowded with tourists.
1. Plains, Jimmy Carter's home, is a soul-changing experience. The town is so small, population 650, that it has one business, a gas station. The attraction is the closed school that's now a 'museum', really more of a memorial honoring the Carters. They show a movie about his political career that will change the way you think about Jimmy and small town politicians in general .. for the better. He really is a Good Man, almost saint-like.
2. Okefenokee, in SE Georgia near FL, is like going through a time warp 50 million years. The word swamp makes people think of green slime. This swamp is mostly dry land crisscrossed by hundreds of miles of natural canals filled with water the color of iced tea. The only good way to see it is in a rented canoe. You'll have alligators swimming under the boat and sunning on banks a few feet away. They're everywhere. They're not dangerous, despite what you saw on TV. You'll see flights containing thousands of ibis, sandhill cranes, roseatte spoonbills and other tropical birds. Maybe tens of thousands at a time. You half expect to see dinosaurs. This is the real deal, not some Disney recreation or animated Jurassic Park. It's the perfect place to spend a week away from modern life. Go to the main entrance of the federal park; avoid the small state park and avoid the touristy power boat tour, which is limited to one canal.
3. Calloway Gardens, in Western Georgia north of Columbus, is one of the best botanical gardens in the US. One of its attractions is the Day Butterfly Center, named for the founder of Day's Inns, a big greenhouse containing hundreds of buttterflies and hummingbirds. The grounds are large. It is several miles from the entrance to the main buildings. At Christmastime, they have wonderful roadside displays that are best seen at night. Seeing most of it takes a whole day, or at least four hours.
