You might expect residents of Helen, Georgia, to greet you in this fashion since their entire town is decorated in the Bavarian style, but Helen’s history is far from German. In this post, learn why this logging and gold-mining town transformed into the unique alpine village it is today, and Read more…
Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, is the holiday on the evening before All Saints’ (or All Hallows’) Day on November 1. Around 2,000 years ago, the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in) was celebrated in ancient Britain and Ireland on November 1, as that was considered the New Year and Read more…
Did you ever create make-shift forts as a kid? Now you can explore the real thing! The Southeastern coast of the U.S. boasts a wealth of historic forts, remnants of the days when this territory was a battleground between the British, Spanish, and French, and later Union and Confederate forces. Read more…
If you guessed Thomasville was named after a man named Thomas, you’d be right! Thomas Jefferson Johnson, owner/builder of Pebble Hill Plantation (see below), formed Thomas County in Southwest Georgia in 1825 and the county seat one year later. Both are believed to be named for a Major General Thomas, Read more…
Activities The Biltmore Estate Of course one of the most iconic attractions in the Asheville area is the Biltmore Estate, built by George Vanderbilt III in 1895 in the style of French Renaissance chateaus. It really is jaw-dropping in its beauty and scale, featuring 250 rooms filled with thousands of Read more…
We may think that gators reside primarily in Florida (think the University of Florida Gators), but even though they are found in all of the state’s 67 counties, they can also be found as far west as southeast Oklahoma and east Texas and as far northeast as North Carolina. This Read more…
When I tell people I am from Jacksonville, Florida, they tend to reply “Oh yes, I drive past there heading down I-95!” With this blog post, I intend to give you a reason to stop! Below is a list of the best seafood restaurants with beautiful water views – all Read more…
St. Augustine’s Castillo de San Marcos has seen fifteen battles and two sieges without a defeat and has withstood almost 350 years’ worth of rain, floods, and hurricanes. What accounts for the success and longevity of this oldest masonry fort in the U.S.? One word: Coquina. Spanish for “tiny shell,” Read more…
Imagine you are one of the Gilded Aged mega rich. Let’s say your last name is Rockefeller. You join the Jekyll Island Club, an elite hunting retreat founded in 1886 on Jekyll Island, Georgia. By the early 1900s, it is populated with dozens of other prominent families boasting names such Read more…
Native American Shell Mounds These circular Indian mounds built of shells, also known as middens, reflect that Sapelo was home to the oldest Native American civilization in the state of Georgia over 4500 years ago. Creek Indians inhabited the island as recently as the mid-1700s when the British, who acquired Read more…