Upon the advice of fellow travelers, Mike and Jennifer have been meandering along smaller highways and byways and making wonderful discoveries along the way.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
November 2016
One of the great things about traveling North America in a Type B motorhome is the maneuverability it affords for navigating narrower roads and traveling the so-called “Blue Highways,” a phrase coined by author William Least Heat-Moon. Least Heat-Moon used this term to describe the back roads, depicted in blue on the atlas he used. Not that you can’t enjoy such travels in a Type A or C motorhome, of course, but it’s just generally easier to travel with a smaller footprint.
This year, Jennifer and I have made a concerted effort to stay off the interstates as much as possible. And in doing so, our serendipity style of travel has opened up new sights and experiences that only the back roads offer.
We stop and park on downtown streets in many of the small towns we pass through. That’s where you find the best home-cooked meals, in little mom-and-pop family-run diners and restaurants. We usually order the daily special and eavesdrop on the locals as they talk about the weather, the crops, politics, and life in their community.
We also try to visit every small-town museum we pass, learning about local industry, pioneer life, famous citizens, and the like.
Take the state of Georgia, for example.
We’ve traveled through Georgia dozens of times over the years, but it wasn’t until we got off the interstate that we realized how gorgeous it is. Specifically, we explored a 6,500-acre forested tract known as Callaway Gardens, located in Pine Mountain, just north of Columbus, Georgia, and an hour and a half south of Atlanta.
We’d heard of the place, of course. As a resort destination, it draws more than 750,000 visitors annually. But because we were always so rushed — that’s what traveling the interstates does to you — it wasn’t until we followed some reader suggestions and did some two-lane exploration that we found ourselves in a densely wooded area founded in 1952 by Cason J. and Virginia Hand Callaway to promote and protect native azalea species.
It’s much more than that now, so much so that thousands of other plants, trees, and flowers have been protected in what officially is known as the Cason J. Callaway Memorial Forest, designated a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Callaway family made their fortune in the Georgia textile industry early in the 20th century, and the area that everyone calls Callaway Gardens features lakes, a huge swimming beach, wilderness tracts, a world-class butterfly house, a resort, a chapel, a lodge, and a conference center. We visited in mid-August, after school started down South, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves as we spent all day exploring.
Located in the tiny town of Pine Mountain, the sprawling resort is a place of spectacular solitude. Jennifer and I hiked the trails and walkways and stopped often, sitting in the shade, just marveling at the beauty. Pine Mountain — approximately 1,000 feet in elevation — is just high enough to avoid the stifling heat and humidity that plagues the rest of the Deep South in August. It’s still plenty warm, mind you, but comfortable enough to be outside in the shade.
So, we hiked a bit, and then we found one of the many benches scattered about. Shafts of sun filtered down through 90-foot-high longleaf pines. Birds chirped. There was no traffic noise, no whirring air conditioners. It was very relaxing, and the air was scented with the satisfying aroma of the longleaf pines.
These trees are majestic. Their needlelike leaves, which come in bundles of three, can grow up to 18 inches long. Mature trees stand 80 to 100 feet tall. Their single trunks, which are covered in thick, scaly bark, reach up to 3 feet in diameter. These slow-growing trees live for more than 300 years, and they may take up to half that time to reach their full size. The trees naturally prune their lower branches and grow nearly perfectly straight. At one time, they covered 80 percent of Georgia, along with a swath of land that ran from Virginia down to northern Florida, and west to Texas. Excessive logging decimated the longleaf forests, and today they’re found in great quantities only in places such as Callaway Gardens.
We visited the Day Butterfly Center, named after Cecil B. Day, founder of the Day’s Inn motel chain and a philanthropist and supporter of the gardens. The structure is one of North America’s largest glass-enclosed tropical conservatories, housing more than 1,000 butterflies of 50-plus species.
I loved the Birds of Prey show at the Callaway Discovery Center. These magnificent creatures — which cannot be released into the wild, either as a result of injury or having developed an unnatural association with humans, known as “imprinting” — demonstrate their strength, speed, and natural instincts in daily free-flight shows. Several birds appear at each show, swooping overhead and giving guests an up-close look “on the glove,” while raptor experts explain how humans’ actions affect the birds’ well-being.
I was taking photos when a red-tailed hawk swooped down, almost knocking the camera from my hands and literally brushing me with his feathers. I swear he was chuckling as he passed by, and the people around me gasped and shrieked. It was awesome.
The gardens used to encompass 13,000 acres. A little more than half of that has slowly been sold off for housing developments, chalets, and vacation villas. The 6,000 remaining acres offer plenty of things to see. Most amazing to us was learning that it is all “man-made”; the original scrub and red clay terrain has been transformed into the lush parklike landscape of today, all conceived and created by Cason and Virginia Callaway.
Cason Callaway longed for a place where mankind and nature could abide together for the good of both. The retreat he established in the southernmost foothills of the Appalachian Mountains lives up to the way he described it to friends when he said it was “the best garden since Adam was young.”
It’s well worth a visit. Plenty of parking is available, and the roads can be navigated by smaller RVs. Others will want to visit in a towed car.
For camping, just go a few miles down the road to the 9,000-acre Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. Roosevelt so loved this area — first as governor of New York and then as president of the United States — that he retreated there as often as he could, living in an unassuming little two-bedroom cottage not far from his favorite spring. He explored widely, driving cars with hand controls he designed himself. He was instrumental in the creation of the state park that bears his name, as well as a rehabilitation and therapeutic treatment center for polio patients in nearby Warm Springs.
The park looks like it could be in Great Smoky Mountains National Park; that’s how big and wild it is. It boasts more than 40 miles of well-maintained hiking trails, including the popular 23-mile Pine Mountain Trail. These trails wind through hardwoods and pines, over creeks, and past small waterfalls. Best of all in our book, hikers can bring their dogs, as long as they are on a 6-foot leash. Few such wilderness areas anywhere in the country allow dogs to hike with their owners. At F.D. Roosevelt State Park, pets are very welcome.
The park also has a stunning campground with 105 electric-equipped sites, perfect for Type B and Type C motorhomes. A few spots can handle vehicles as long as 40 feet, but most spots accommodate RVs 25 feet long or less.
We never would have explored this special area if we had stuck to the interstates.
We plan to return.