Blairsville, GA
Coffee shop and roastery on the downtown square, five minutes from the field; beans roasted fresh daily, espresso drinks with a local following for the Tumbleweed, bagels, pastries, and sandwiches, with breakfast and lunch served all day and armchairs by the fireplace. There is a drive-through if you want it to go. Open seven days, mornings through early afternoon; weekdays from 7, Sunday wraps at 1, so this is the breakfast-and-lunch stop, not dinner. Blairsville is the gateway town for Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest point, and in October the mountains around the field light up.
Mountain airport at 1,900ft MSL in the heart of the North Georgia Blue Ridge. The town of Blairsville was founded in 1835 on land ceded by the Cherokee — a Coosa Creek gold strike town until the mines played out around 1910 — and today is the county seat at the gateway to the Chattahoochee National Forest. Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest point at 4,784ft, sits 9 miles east; the Appalachian Trail traverses the area south of the field. Fall color across the surrounding ridges rivals New England. Single 3,000ft runway with the Blue Ridge close on every side.
The most-visited national park in the United States — by a wide margin, drawing more than twice the visitors of the Grand Canyon — straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina line along the crest of the southern Appalachians. The "smoke" is real: the dense forest exhales so much water vapor and organic compounds that a blue-grey haze hangs permanently over the ridges. It's one of the most biodiverse temperate places on Earth — over 19,000 documented species, with estimates of many times more, and the salamander capital of the world. The park has no entrance fee (a condition of the land transfer from Tennessee and North Carolina). Cades Cove, a broad valley ringed by peaks with preserved pioneer cabins, and Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee, are the signatures; the Appalachian Trail runs the crest for 71 miles.
The largest exposed mass of granite in the world — a 825-foot bald dome of solid quartz monzonite rising abruptly from the Piedmont forest 16 miles east of downtown Atlanta. The visible dome is the tip of a pluton that extends nine miles into the earth. The north face carries the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world (190 feet wide, 90 feet tall) depicting Confederate generals Lee, Jackson, and Davis on horseback — a controversial monument carved between 1923 and 1972. The mountain's base is a state park with a lake, gondola, and walk-up trail to the summit. From the air the dome reads as a single bare gray-pink stone in a sea of green.
On November 24, 1863, Union forces attacked Confederate positions on Lookout Mountain in what became known as the 'Battle Above the Clouds' — fog and mist shrouded the mountain during the fight. The cliff face rises 1,400 feet above the Tennessee River, creating one of the most dramatic geological features in the eastern US. Point Park on the summit and the Incline Railway are visible from the air. The Tennessee River makes a dramatic horseshoe bend around Moccasin Bend at the base.
On the south side of the world's busiest airport, in Delta's two original 1940s maintenance hangars, sits a museum with one of the great employee-loyalty stories in aviation. In 1982 — Delta's first money-losing year, amid deregulation and high fuel — three flight attendants started "Project 767" to buy the company a brand-new Boeing 767. Employees, retirees, and friends raised $30 million, and in a ceremony attended by thousands they handed the airline its first 767, named the Spirit of Delta. It's the centerpiece here: you walk under and around the actual aircraft. Alongside it sits Ship 41, a Douglas DC-3 that flew Delta's first passengers, restored by Delta employees — the first aircraft ever given a National Trust for Historic Preservation award.