Northern Mississippi’s
Eclectic Center |
“When football season gets going and the temperatures start to ease, Oxford is where I want to be,” writes G&G contributor Jenny Adams. “As August rolls into its last weeks, the Square comes alive with open-door boutiques, Thacker Mountain Radio shows, signings at Square Books, hot pizza, cold martinis, and yes, Ole Miss freshmen driving the wrong way around the circle. Plenty of folks visit for the classics, including William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak and fried catfish on the weathered porch of Old Taylor Grocery. But the place is also constantly reinventing itself. College towns tend to do that.”
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EXPLORE MORE OF NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI |
STORIES TO INSPIRE WANDERLUST
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Literary Hot Spots in a Writerly College Town |
Cool Detours on the Natchez Trace Parkway |
Soaking Up Serenity on the Whirlpool Trails |
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The late Julia Reed chronicled her 2012 road trip through the Mississippi Delta with the actor and photographer Jessica Lange for G&G. Relive their journey, from Memphis through Reed’s “lifelong stomping grounds,” and see Lange’s striking photos of the region.
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Captain Brian Holaway leads private eco-tours off the coast of Fort Myers.
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FIND YOUR FAVORITE FORT MYERS ITINERARY: Great vacation destinations tend to fall into specific categories: historic cities, nature havens, family-friendly destinations, and so on. But in Fort Myers, Florida, you get all of the above and more. In Fort Myers and surrounding areas, there are just as many sunny beaches to comb as there are verdant wildlife habitats—frequented by manatees, great blue herons, and roseate spoonbills—to traverse. You’ll find a thriving arts scene against a backdrop of warm Gulf waters, plus plenty to keep the kids entertained, be it zipping down slides at Sunsplash Family Waterpark or teeing off at PopStroke, a Tiger Woods–created putting course. Do it all, or determine your vacation mode by taking the Fort Myers “This or That” Quiz.
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ELSEWHERE AROUND THE SOUTH |
Seven Southern Hotel Pools
Where the Water’s Just Fine |
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Cashiers and Highlands, North Carolina. Though some of us in Charleston don’t mind the marathon steambath known as summer, there comes a time to cool off and flee for the hills. So my wife and I gladly swapped places with the upland folk heading for the beach and spent a long July weekend in Western North Carolina, where we soaked up mountain scenery in ways both genteel and jaw-dropping:
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Roadside attractions: Trying out an unfamiliar hotel can be hit or miss, but we found two keepers, each with an updated motor-lodge vibe. First, at the Wells Hotel, bookended by a brewery and a coffeehouse in Cashiers, a compact but stylish room soothed our road-weary souls with a comfy four-poster king bed and a spacious walk-in shower. The next two evenings, we nested at mountaintop Skyline Lodge near Highlands, where the young woman at check-in informed us the bears in the hood were “friendly.” Built in the 1930s, Skyline was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright’s, whose influence endures in the ample wood, stone, and low-slung horizontal lines.
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Secret gardens: The Highlands-Cashiers plateau has long lured second-home owners, and the Joy Garden Tour, a biannual fundraiser in Cashiers, allowed us to crash some of their Edenic—and usually out-of-view—surroundings. We spent Friday morning getting shuttled along winding back roads to four different private havens. Among the highlights: a pair of Middle Earth–y hideouts beside the Whitewater River, with mossy boulders, cinnamon ferns, and blooming rhododendrons; and a manor-house lawn with a postcard panorama of the sheer cliffs of Whiteside Mountain.
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Flow state: Saturday morning, we hiked an undulating path through rhododendron thickets to Ranger Falls, spilling thirty-five feet or so over a granite bluff. After refueling with fajitas at Los Vaqueros, a reliable Tex-Mex standby in Highlands (I skipped the fifty-two-ounce “go big or go home” margarita—this time), we headed northwest for the greatest-hits collection of waterfalls along Highway 64: Lower Cullasaja Falls, plunging dramatically through a steep canyon; the swimming hole and natural slide at Quarry (a.k.a. Bust-Your-Butt) Falls; and popular Dry Falls, where, despite its name, we got thoroughly misted. No two alike, and each one a masterpiece.
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MORE TRAVEL STORIES FROM G&G |
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