Interstate 75 takes millions of Midwestern families on vacation to Florida every year. Interstates have shrunk the country; as James Brown sang in “Living in America,” “there’s no destination that’s too far.”
On the downside, they’ve also homogenized the nation. Pass 100 exits on the interstate in a long day of driving and 90% of the restaurants, hotels and gas stations are the same from Detroit to Tampa.
Not Exit 290 on I-75 in Georgia.
This is Cartersville, 40 miles northwest of Atlanta. Its small-town charm has yet to be totally subsumed by the ATL’s voracious sprawl. It’s happening, however, and the takeover won’t take much longer.
Enjoy Cartersville from Exit 290 when passing through on your way to the Sunshine State, or back, for as long as you’re able.
A Pit Stop
Who’s been here: fast food is trash and everyone in the car wants something different. You’d love to find a real restaurant, but want to stay near the interstate to keep on schedule. Plus, you don’t know this place or where to eat. You’d also love the chance to walk around a bit after sitting in the car all day.
The Allatoona Dam Food Truck Park & Beer Garden is the answer to your prayers.
What a brilliant idea!
One tenth of a mile west of the exit adjacent to the gas stations, a handful of rotating local food trucks, an air-conditioned trailer serving ice-cold craft beer and ciders in cans, and a little room to stretch your legs provides an oasis along the asphalt Amazon.
Everyone gets what they want, its quick, its local, there’s healthy(er) options and you can revive yourself for the impending slog through Atlanta traffic when heading south.
The food trucks operate from 11:30 AM to sundown every day except Monday and the beer garden is open 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM, again, every day except Monday, and extends to 11:30 PM on weekends.
A Couple Hours
Yeah, the slog through Atlanta traffic. When motoring south on I-75, Cartersville is on the extreme northern limits of the Georgia capital’s Blob-like consumption of its surrounding area. With no natural barriers to growth, sprawl here is epidemic.
Considering the time of day and conditions, drivers may be looking at the better part of two-hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic from Cartersville before clearing Atlanta’s southern reaches. Puke.
If you’re rolling up on Cartersville during morning or afternoon commuting rush on a weekday, your mental health might be served better by hanging out for a couple hours. Cartersville has some great places to hang, starting with its charming, historic, train depot downtown five miles from Exit 290.
Boutique shops and restaurants cover a couple block area with plenty of parking and sidewalks for meandering.
JZ’s Taste of Georgia features beer, wine and meads from around the state in a country store-like space on Main Street. You’ll also find Georgia knickknacks, art, souvenirs and live music if you hit it right on Friday or Saturday night. Across the street is a Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers. There are now hundreds of Mellow Mushroom locations around the country, still, the product remains remarkably consistent and delicious from restaurant to restaurant and if you need a local connection, the chain started in Atlanta.
If you’re traveling with kids and they’ve been especially well-behaved, Coconuts ice cream and shave ice around the corner is a throwback treats stand with cones, sundaes, shakes and the like. Gauging from the lines for both walk-up and drive-through your likely to experience, you know it’s good.
Continuing with the nostalgia vibes, Ross Diner the next block over from Mellow is an old-school short-order breakfast and lunch spot (6:30 AM–2:30 PM daily except Sunday) with counter service and the circular stools. The prices are old-school too. How about a three-egg breakfast with grits or hashbrowns, and toast or biscuits and gravy, with bacon, sausage, turkey sausage or bologna, for $8.25?
Lean all the way in to the 1970s and 80s time machine next door to Ross Diner where RocknShop sells vinyl records, concert posters and t-shirts from a bygone era. Rush, Fleetwood Mac, Kiss, Van Halen, Pink Floyd, yup. Live music on occasion, too. Hours vary, so check before dropping in.
Olive Treen and Vine a block up the street has dozens of unusual olive oil samples to keep the older kids occupied while the grown folks enjoy beer, wine or coffee from the back. No need to rush, Cartersville has open carry of alcohol in its downtown “Entertainment District.”
Art and Culture
Cartersville bills itself as “Georgia’s Museum City” thanks to the Savoy Automobile Museum, the Tellus Science Museum and the Booth Western Art Museum, each preeminent among their fields.
A Western art museum–think cowboys and Native Americans of the Plains and Southwest–may seem like an odd fit for west Georgia, but it works at the Booth. With the largest exhibition space in the world for Western art–sorry Santa Fe and Denver–the permanent collection at the Booth features the icons of the genre–Frederic Remington, C.M. Russell, Maynard Dixon–but its strength is in contemporary Western art since 1965.
Anyone overruled in vacation planning sacrificing mountains and mesas for the Mouse can catch a whiff of the West through stunning landscape paintings of New Mexico and the Rockies at the Booth. The enormous scale of the museum allows it to display a number of staggeringly large artworks that may even impress angsty teens. The Booth’s “Sagebrush Ranch” gallery is hands-on for little ones.
The museum has a fine sampling of contemporary Native American art, premiere rotating exhibitions, and galleries devoted to the U.S. presidents, and contemporary art related to the Civil War. Those last two will hit different visitors very differently generating responses ranging from extreme pride to extreme disgust.
The Booth is closed on Mondays.
When the weather’s good, the Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site three miles out of downtown makes for a worthwhile excursion. A small visitor’s center leads guests to the one-time communal area featuring a number of mounds, the tallest of which stands 63-feet. Stairs lead to the top.
This area, and for hundreds of miles in every direction, was once home to what have become known as the Mississippian people–mound builders. Between roughly 1000 and 1600 AD, hundreds of communities with residents numbering into the thousands were spread across the southeast along rivers–here, the Etowah River. Inhabitants engaged in trade networks covering the continent, developed distinct languages and cultural practices, hunted, gathered and planted corn, beans and squash.
The historic site is open daily.
Additionally noteworthy is the site’s substantial reintroduction of native grasses on the grounds which bring in a wonderful variety of butterflies and dragonflies.
Overnight
Seven miles east of Exit 290 on State Road 20 travelers will find another surprise: a winery. Big Door Vineyards grows vines on a small plot of land producing a boutique suite of varietals much better than you’d expect. The vineyard is open daily with a tasting room, tours and full food service, again, much better than you’d expect.
If you feel like calling it a day in Cartersville–good choice–stay at the Courtyard by Marriott one mile from Exit 290. Opened in spring of 2021, it has a small outdoor pool, a better than average fitness center, excellent free wi-fi and the rooms are reasonably priced and equipped with everything you’d expect from a major brand property.
What it also has that you don’t expect from a branded hotel is solar panels providing power. I’d never go so far as to consider the hotel “sustainable,” but with solar panels and inclusion of a small number of native plants in its landscaping, the Courtyard by Marriott in Cartersville is more environmentally friendly than 99% of the chain hotels along I-75.
Anyone looking for a dining experience more refined than pizza, grits and ice cream will be pleased by the Appalachian Grill back downtown. This part of Georgia is hilly, the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. Fish, seafood, steaks and more are served Tuesday through Saturday less than four miles from the Courtyard. Grab a nightcap in the tasting room at Drowned Valley Brewing Company one block up and over from the restaurant.
Your vacation plans may not take you to Cartersville, but if they take you by Cartersville, take advantage of Cartersville.
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