Heading South-West

I've had the best time getting to know a certain part of Georgia. Even though I grew up in this beautiful state, I'm really only familiar with central Georgia, coastal Georgia, north Georgia, and the Atlanta area. Now that I have started dating a guy from southwest Georgia, I'm getting the opportunity to explore little towns that dot that portion of the state.

This weekend was a wonderful op to see the treasures surrounding Preston, Georgia. Yes - he lives in a tiny little town called Preston. (A place I had NEVER heard of.)

Friday night we drove about 20 minutes to Americus, a town that has about 19,000 people. Americus has beautiful historical homes and fantastic architecture.
We ended up at a fantastic restaurant on the main strip in downtown Americus called, "The 1800." It was a delicious Mexican Restaurant in a beautiful historic building. The food was delicious and my margarita was divine! After dinner, we walked up to The Windsor Hotel. This hotel was built in 1892 and it is very much Victorian. Absolutely beautiful. Here is a blurry photo I took of the lobby:

On Saturday, we headed 9 miles over to Plains, Georgia, population: 683. According to their official site, "The town is both old and new.  It existed in the 1840’s but was not established on its present site until the 1880’s.  When the Seaboard Railroad came through the area in the late nineteenth century, a depot was built and the people flocked to it, relocating their town."

We ended up wandering through the downtown area (which is one block,) and found ourselves in this little antique/political memorabilia shop. The quirky owner told unlimited jokes as we perused the aisles of Jimmy Carter stuff. (Yes, President Jimmy Carter is not only from Plains, but still lives there.) Apparently, Amy Carter, Jimmy's daughter, spends many Saturday afternoons sitting on the floor of this shop reading comic books. 

  We ended up trying some DELICIOUS homemade Peanut Butter icecream. Peanuts are a HUGE product in Georgia, and specifically are grown in this region.

 After we wrapped up our Plains visit (going through all of the shops,) we headed over to Albany, Georgia, population: 77, 434. My guy knows how much I am interested in industry/economic impact/downtown revitalization - so he went through the downtown area there. There were a few flags on street lights mentioning something about "Restore Albany," but honestly, the town has a long way to go. We stopped at the RiverQuarium - right there on the Flint River.

The aquarium was decent - I am assuming their education programs for kids are probably their key to staying alive. The museum was not curated very well, and half of the time I was not making a connection between what I was seeing and what they were trying to educate us on. Aside from that, I enjoyed this "Blue Hole" - the photo above. There were some crazy looking fish that live fairly deep in our rivers down here, and it was fascinating to check them out.

After the aquarium, we walked over to the River Walk - which was really quite nice.

The Ray Charles exhibit was very similar to what Macon did with the Little Richard exhibit. Very well done, and I really enjoyed the large playground and chair swings for adults. Definitely a great place to spend the afternoon.

Before we headed out of town, we stopped by Buffalo Wild Wings, and I do believe the bartender there made the perfect margarita. I bought their Primo Margarita (with Patron,) and I have to say - it was worth every penny!

That night we wrapped things up back at my guy's house and enjoyed a fire and champagne.

As for Super Bowl Sunday, we ended up grilling Tbone steaks and watched "Lucy" a new sci-fi thriller that was FANTASTIC! I highly recommend it.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend! Hope you guys get a chance to explore these little communities. If you live in Macon, we are talking only an hour and a half drive south through some beautiful countryside!

Here's hoping for more small town adventures!