Atlanta, GA
The WWII landmark on the south side of the field, styled as a 1940s European farmhouse: you pass a gate, gas lamps, and sandbags, with vintage warbirds and vehicles parked on the grounds and memorabilia on every wall inside. The pilot move: ask for a table with the headsets and listen to PDK tower live while corporate jets, trainers, and warbirds share the pattern at Georgia's second-busiest airport. The prime rib is the house pride, the steaks are hand-cut, and the Sweetwater 420 beer cheese soup is the local-beer starter; the patio has fire pits against the runway fence, and the lounge runs a DJ and dancing every Friday and Saturday. Named for the real 57th Fighter Group that fought over North Africa; the restaurant itself has died and been reborn over the decades, family-run since its 2009 revival. Closed Mondays; open Tuesday through Sunday from 11, until 9 most nights and midnight Friday and Saturday.
One of the busiest GA airports in the US, PDK was originally a Naval Air Station during WWII, training over 3,000 cadets. The 57th Fighter Group Restaurant is named for the actual WWII unit that flew P-40 Warhawks and P-47 Thunderbolts in North Africa and Italy — the restaurant is filled with authentic memorabilia. PDK is now Atlanta's premier business aviation airport and a thriving GA community.
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 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.
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.
East of Birmingham, a 2.66-mile paved oval sits in the Alabama woods; Talladega, the longest and fastest track in NASCAR, with turns banked at 33 degrees. From the air the banking is the tell; the track is not flat like a road, it is tilted up at the edges into a shallow bowl. It was built in 1969 on top of a former airfield, and the infield still has an airstrip. The tri-oval shape, the acres of parking, the grandstands stacked along the front straight; there is no mistaking it for anything else once you are over it.