When it comes to Georgia barbecue, it’s hard to get a consensus of opinion, but everyone that I consider a qualified barbecue expert considers Harold’s on McDonough Boulevard near the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to be among his or her top five choices for the “Best Barbecue Restaurant in Georgia.” It’s definitely on my top five list. Great pork, first-rate Brunswick stew, and wonderful cracklin’ cornbread, something that’s increasingly hard to find anywhere else.

The ambiance is everything you could hope for. An old, one-story brick building with terrible parking, small pine-paneled rooms with tables covered with red and white oil cloth, and straight-backed chairs crowded with pin-striped lawyers, secretaries and factory workers.

Learn more about Harold’s and find a map with driving directions on the Harold’s profile here on the BG site.

Find over 500 other Georgia Restaurants from barbecue and crab shacks to five star dining and everything in between.

A gift that is sure to please every personal and business friend on your gift list this Christmas is the Ultimate Gift Card from the Buckhead Life Restaurant Group, operators of some of the top-rated and most popular restaurants in Atlanta. The gift card works like a debit card, it never expires and is rechargeable with an automatic 10 percent added value.

Any cards purchased between now and January 31 receive a 20 percent upgrade added to the card value at no extra cost. And here’s a deal if you are considering using the Ultimate Card to take care of a large number of names on your list: If you have a combined purchase of $1,000 or more, you get another 25 percent added value. Not bad. That means if you purchased 10 $100 gift cards for names on your list, you’d get $1,450 in value or $45 per $100 card. Read the rest of this entry »

The Vineyard at Frogtown Cellars. Frogtown Cellars is one of 10 wineries and vineyards on this Christmas shopping tour of northeast Georgia wine country. The drive passes close to two other locations for BG Gift Guide shopping.

Georgia has a long and colorful history of vineyards and wineries dating back to the 1800s and before. But state and national prohibition laws shut down the industry in the early 1900s, and it’s only in recent years that it has started to make a comeback.

The Wine Growers Association of Georgia produces a Georgia Wine Highway map that takes you to 10 wineries in the scenic northeast corner of the state, including Blackstock Vineyards, Chateau Elan, Crane Creek Vineyards, Frogtown Cellars, Habersham Winery, Montaluce Winery, Persimmon Creek Winery, Sharp Mountain Vineyards, Tiger Mountain Vineyards and Wolf Mountain Vineyards. A drive along the route with stops at a few of the 10 would allow you to check off just about every adult on your Christmas gift list with a bottle (or a case) of a different Georgia wine.

An extra plus to this particular driving tour is that it passes very close to two other sources for Georgia gifts recommended in the BG Gift Guide this year: the Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia in Sautee Nacoochee and Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, home of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls.

What better way to do all of your Christmas shopping than a weekend trip to the beautiful north Georgia Mountains?

I’m blogging every Friday between now and Christmas about special Georgia products, foods and experiences that would make memorable Christmas gifts. If you have, make, sell, grow or otherwise create such products, or if you were ever given a Georgia gift that lives in your memory, let me hear from you. The only real requirements are that it has to be high-quality and related to Georgia. The Gift Guide so far:

• Georgia Folk Pottery
• Beth Young’s environmental note cards
• Howard Finster art
• Brumby Rocker
• Cabbage Patch Kids
• Story Tellers
• Georgia Back Roads
• Vidalia Onions, Dressings and Relishes

Georgia Post Cards. Use the Flickr connection to send a friend a historical Georgia post card like this one of Thunderbolt on the Savannah River or the entire set of 25 with scenes of Georgia from the mountains to the coast.

One of the features of the Brown’s Guide site that I have enjoyed the most and one I think will be lots of fun for users in the future is the Gallery / Flickr connection.

Using this resource, you can greatly expand your enjoyment of the photos and images in the Brown’s Guide Gallery and share them with friends. Send a single image or the entire collection of Howard Finster paintings. Is there one post card in the Historical postcard Gallery that pictures your town or county? Send it to a friend or send the entire collection of 25 cards. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite walking tours in Georgia is the stroll around Fort Gaines on the Chattahoochee River in the southwest part of the state. Few places in Georgia so evoke the past in such a dramatic way. The view from the bluff just south of Lake Walter F. George Dam is an inspiring one and gives you an understanding as few other places can of the important role rivers have played in the history of the state. My wife Sherri and I wrote the Riverkeeper’s Guide to the Chattahoochee in 1996. I said then, and I still believe now, that the Fort Gaines Bluff is one of the most interesting physical locations along the entire river, particularly when you realize that this is the kind of terrain that existed in Eufaula, Franklin and Bainbridge before the building of dams and the impoundment of lakes.

The Frontier Village constructed on the bluff, the historical houses throughout the town, and the colorful stories about the town’s characters make Fort Gaines a must for places to visit in Georgia; and it’s with great pleasure that we include James Edgar Coleman’s Fort Gaines Walking Tour as this week’s post in the Do-It-Yourself Tours blog.

A New Section of the Streams, Rivers and Lakes blog describes where rivers come from and how they work, from their headwaters to where they flow into the ocean.

How Rivers Work in the Streams, Rivers and Lakes blog is an important new section of the Brown’s Guide website with descriptions of how rivers work, along with explanatory illustrations by Roel Wielinga. Read the rest of this entry »

The Adventure Cycling Association, along with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, has just turned in a proposal for a 50,000-mile network of bike trails, including three proposed corridors in Georgia.

A blueprint for what could become the largest official bicycle route network in the world – in the end it would span more than 50,000 miles in Georgia and all 49 other states – has been approved by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Read the rest of this entry »

For personal or corporate gifts to friends or business clients who have the good taste to appreciate Georgia foods, you can’t beat Vidalia Onion dressings and relishes from the Vidalia Onion Factory in the heart of Vidalia Onion Country.

You can order a gift box with 4 bottles of dressing, which you can select yourself from a list of 20 or so possibilities, for $20.50 per box, plus shipping; or a box with 6 large jars of relish for $29.50 plus shipping. The website has other options for different size boxes of dressings and relishes. Read the rest of this entry »

Put Your Mark on History. There are currently 20 historical markers in need of repair in the 18-county Chattahoochee Valley region of Georgia and Alabama covered by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission. Here’s how you can change that.

The Historic Chattahoochee Commission has launched an “Adopt a Marker” campaign to generate funds for the refinishing of historical markers throughout its eighteen Georgia and Alabama counties in the Chattahoochee Valley. In the 30 years since 1978, the Commission and a variety of co-sponsors have erected almost 300 historical markers, which depict the people, places, events and buildings that have helped shape the history of the lower Chattahoochee Valley. While the responsibility for repairing or refinishing these markers rests with the co-sponsoring organizations, often times they do not have the funds necessary to replace a broken support post or repair the text panels and logo. Read the rest of this entry »

I have lots of memories about the natural environment along the Flint River from walking over the Fall Line at Yellow Jacket Shoals during one of the worst droughts in Georgia history to being tricked into jumping into the icy springs of the river below Albany. But one of my most vivid Flint memories is of a distinctly unnatural environment.

Jim Woodruff Lock and Dam on Lake Seminole. Looking from this view, the lock is on the left. Boats locking through go from Lake Seminole, above, down to the Apalachicola River. For instructions on how to “lock through,” click here. To read more about Jim Woodruff Dam and see a map showing its location in the Apalachicola – Chattahoochee – Flint system, click here. Read the rest of this entry »