Jump to a day
Stops, in order
- Stop 1Shenandoah National Park & Skyline DriveShenandoah National Park & Skyline Drive, VADays 180–182
A 105-mile ridgeline drive through the Blue Ridge, with waterfalls, overlooks, and the largest caverns in the East just below.
Thomas Jefferson's home ground — his mountaintop Monticello and the 'academical village' he designed for the University of Virginia.
Virginia's capital on the James — a Jefferson-designed statehouse, a superb art museum, and the country's most thoughtful Civil War museum.
The Historic Triangle — colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown — plus a theme park and the oceanfront at Virginia Beach.
A thin ribbon of barrier islands where the Wright Brothers first flew, tall lighthouses stripe the dunes, and wild ponies roam the north beaches.
North Carolina's Research Triangle — the capital's free museums, Duke's Gothic campus, and the tobacco town turned tech hub.
A mountain arts-and-beer town wrapped around America's largest house, with the Blue Ridge Parkway and the highest peak in the East at the door.
The 'Queen City' — a banking-tower skyline, NASCAR's hall of fame, and a whitewater center on the edge of town.
A riverfront port town on the Cape Fear — a battleship across the water, a walkable historic district, and beaches minutes away.
An old textile town reborn as one of the South's most charming small downtowns — a waterfall in the middle of Main Street.
The largest intact old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in America — some of the tallest trees in the East, over a boardwalk and a blackwater creek.
South Carolina's capital — a statehouse that still bears Sherman's cannon scars, and one of the best zoos in the country.
The Grand Strand — 60 miles of beach, a boardwalk and SkyWheel, more mini-golf than anywhere on earth, and a sculpture garden nearby.
The Holy City — pastel single houses and church steeples, the fort where the Civil War began, plantation landscapes that reckon with slavery, and some of the best food in America.
Antebellum Beaufort and the Gullah Sea Islands, plus the beaches and marshes of Hilton Head.
America's most beautiful planned city — 22 moss-draped squares, a riverfront of cotton warehouses, and a famously haunted, gothic atmosphere.
Savannah's laid-back beach, with Georgia's oldest lighthouse and a Civil War fort at the river mouth.
Georgia's Golden Isles — a Gilded-Age millionaires' club, a beach of bleached driftwood, sea-turtle rescue, and oak-lined St. Simons.
A quintessential Southern college town and a legendary music scene — R.E.M. and the B-52s came out of these clubs.
A whole town remade as a Bavarian alpine village in the north-Georgia mountains — waterfalls, tubing, and Oktoberfest.
The capital of the New South — the world's busiest airport city, home of Coca-Cola and CNN, a world-class aquarium, and the cradle of the civil-rights movement. The region's climax before the trip turns to Florida.