Everything in Northwest Georgia, by category.
7 places
Carved into the western flank of Lookout Mountain, Cloudland Canyon drops 1,000 feet to a gorge where Daniel Creek tumbles over two sandstone cliffs. Hike the Waterfalls Trail down a long stairway to the base of 90-foot Hemlock Falls and 60-foot Cherokee Falls, or trace the 4.8-mile West Rim Loop along the canyon edge. Reserve a cliffside campsite or yurt to wake up above the gorge.
This 3,712-acre park is named for a mysterious 855-foot stone wall snaking along its summit, an ancient ruin no archaeologist has fully explained. Walk the Old Fort Trail to the wall and the Civilian Conservation Corps stone fire tower, then cool off at the 17-acre mountain lake with its sandy swimming beach. Cottages, campsites, and miles of hiking and mountain-biking trails round out the stay.
Billed as the world's largest classic-car junkyard, this 34-acre forest swallows more than 4,000 vehicles built in 1972 or earlier, most of them rusting hulks from the 1950s and 60s with saplings growing up through their hoods. What began as a 1931 general store turned into a salvage yard, and the family who still runs it now charges photographers a few dollars more than walkers because that is who really comes: this is a photo pilgrimage, with 6-plus miles of pine-needle trails winding past moss-furred Fords and the famous "two-ton flowerpot" Chevy. Plan on several hours, wear real shoes, and note it is open Tuesday through Saturday, roughly 9 to 4. Bring a camera and let the rust and roots do the rest.
A 1,776-acre peninsula leaning out into Lake Allatoona, Red Top takes its name from the iron-rich red clay that streaks its shoreline and once drew miners to dig the soil. More than 15 miles of trail thread the hardwood ridges, and the 4-mile Iron Hill loop runs flat and shaded for hikers and bikers along the water. When summer arrives, a sand swimming beach, boat ramps, and rental cottages fill up fast with Atlanta families forty minutes up I-75.
A Smithsonian-affiliate science museum off I-75 where a hall of full-size dinosaur skeletons gives way to a mineral gallery glittering with cut gems and raw crystals. Kids pan for gemstones and dig for shark teeth in the open-air Fossil Dig, then catch a show under the dome of the planetarium. The 120,000-square-foot building also keeps a hangar of vintage aircraft and a working observatory for weekend stargazing.
Behind a Bulgarian-limestone facade an hour north of Atlanta sits the largest permanent exhibition space for Western art in the country, where Remington bronzes and sweeping Bierstadt landscapes share the floor with movie posters and saddles. A presidential gallery lines up signed letters and portraits of every U.S. president, and a hands-on ranch space lets kids rope and saddle up while the grown-ups linger over the Russells. It is a genuinely strange and wonderful thing to find the American frontier rendered in such depth in small-town Georgia.
A walking trail threads between towering ancient sandstone formations atop Lookout Mountain, past the 100-foot Mushroom Rock, across the swaying Swing-A-Long Bridge, and out to Lover's Leap, where on a clear day you can pick out seven states from a single overlook. The path ends underground in Fairyland Caverns, a series of black-lit dioramas of nursery-rhyme scenes built in the 1940s. Opened to the public in 1932, it is the attraction behind the barn-roof slogan that spread across the South: See Rock City.
