peaches to the beaches
Every March the whole of US 341 turns into a 200-mile yard sale called Peaches to the Beaches, which tells you what kind of road this is: the old Atlanta-to-the-coast main street, still lined with the towns the interstates orphaned. Buggy-making Barnesville, Georgia's oldest peach packinghouse at Musella, harness-racing Hawkinsville, a scrap-built Statue of Liberty in McRae, old-growth longleaf on the Altamaha, and Brunswick's stew-pot claim at the end.
📍 Golden Isles Parkway branding persists; the yard-sale signs bloom every March.
Buggy Days country through Musella's packinghouse porch and the Fort Valley orchards.
The Buggy Capital of the South, which built thousands a year before Detroit ruined the business; Buggy Days still fills September.
Georgia's oldest continuously operating peach packinghouse, running since 1897; eat peach ice cream on the porch while the line clatters.
Hawkinsville's trotters, Eastman's stub-of-a-railroad towns, and McRae's homemade Lady Liberty.
Standardbred trotters winter and train here on the historic track; the spring Harness Festival is rural Georgia's Saratoga.
A 1986 Lions Club Liberty built at one-twelfth scale from local scrap and stubbornness, torch aloft on the square.
The Altamaha's old growth at Moody Forest, Jesup's drive-in, and the shrimp port at the end.
Old-growth longleaf and cypress on the Altamaha, the country Janisse Ray wrote into Ecology of a Cracker Childhood one county over.
A working mid-century drive-in still throwing double features under the Wiregrass sky.
The town holds hard to its cast-iron claim as Brunswick stew's birthplace; Virginia disagrees. Order a bowl and vote.
More in the Deep South: The Blues Highway · Natchez Trace Parkway · Grant's Vicksburg Campaign · The Civil Rights Trail · The Hill Country Ramble · Hank's Lost Highway · Sherman to the Swamp · US 11: The Valley South · The Shoals · The Black Belt & Gee's Bend · The Old Federal Road · US 84: Wiregrass to Mockingbird · The Free State of Jones · US 49: Jackson to the Sound · Sherman's March to the Sea · US 41: Dixie Highway & the Atlanta Campaign · The Chattahoochee Trace · Plains & Andersonville · North Georgia Gold & Apples · The Trail of Tears: Georgia to Kentucky