States: Georgia
Start near: Atlanta (about 1 h 15 min to Barnesville) · Jacksonville (about 1 h 25 min to Brunswick) · Savannah (about 1 h 45 min to Brunswick)
peaches to the beaches
US 341: The Golden Isles Highway is a ~225-mile back-roads route from Barnesville to Brunswick on US 341, driven in 2 days, that stays off I-75 / I-16 through the Deep South.
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.
US 341: The Golden Isles Highway is about 225 miles and takes 2 days at a back-roads pace.
It runs from Barnesville to Brunswick.
It follows US 341.
It avoids I-75 / I-16, using US 341 instead.
7 stops are mapped, including Barnesville, Dickey Farms, Hawkinsville Harness Facility, McRae's Statue of Liberty and Moody Forest.
The atlas’s seasonal note for this route: “Peaches to the Beaches runs the second weekend of March; embrace the crawl or reroute your life.”
Connects with: Plains & Andersonville · Sherman to the Swamp · US 41: Dixie Highway & the Atlanta Campaign
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