Adventures of David and Paul: Cartersville? Yes, Cartersville!

We love traveling and exploring new places, but sometimes we can overlook attractions in our own back yard. Since we had work off on Veteran's Day we decided to take a day trip up to Cartersville, a city of 23,000 people about a 45 minute drive northwest of Atlanta. For a small city it has a surprising and rewarding array of things to see, and despite rainy weather we had a great time.

Our first stop was the Etowah Mounds, which is a Georgia state historic site. Built and occupied from around the years 1000 - 1550, this series of mounds is considered the most intact Mississippian culture site in the Southeast US. The small museum was mostly empty, but for a good reason - all of the items have been returned to the Tribes that own them. The museum will be redone with informative displays. Nice move, Georgia! The main part of the site is two large preserved mounds as well as a reconstructed wattle and daub house. We dodged a couple of school groups and braved the rain to explore the site and the adjacent Etowah River.

A school group climbing the main mound.

View from one mound to another.

Paul walking up the mound.

The wattle and daub house.

Autumn on the Etowah River. There was a nice nature trail here.

From here we drove into town, just a few miles away, and went to the Bartow History Museum. It's a small but surprisingly nice museum in the old Bartow County Courthouse built in 1869. Downtown Cartersville is somewhat nice, but as with many American cities there's too much parking, and there's a very unfortunate and completely unnecessary overpass road. Still, there are a number of little shops and restaurants and historic buildings.

The giant car overpass ruins the atmosphere of downtown.

Inside the history museum.

David checking out the exhibits.

The main stretch of restaurants in downtown.

Cartersville's getting ready for the holiday season!

The 1902 replacement courthouse.

This is supposedly an old slave house, behind the oldest existing house in the county.

Our next stop, and easily the biggest attraction in Cartersville, was the Booth Western Art Museum. This is a huge and impressive museum. In fact, it's the second largest art museum in Georgia, and houses the largest permanent exhibition space for Western art in the country. Of course our immediate question was "why is this in Cartersville"? David asked the employee at the ticket counter, and she informed us that an anonymous local donor funded the entire museum.

The entrance to the Booth Museum.

Paul's favorite painting.

David admiring a large landscape painting.

They even had a stagecoach.

At lunch, we were quickly reminded that rural Georgia is a world away from Atlanta. The restaurant we ate at, Ate Track, had anti-mask signs featuring Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Nugent for president stickers. The food was fine, and the atmosphere had a "1970s basement" vibe.

Ate Track.

Lunch sandwich.

Our final stop was the Tellus Museum, a huge science museum. Many science museums are understandably geared towards children, but this was more of a full museum with informative exhibits. They had interesting sections on transportation, space, dinosaurs, and rocks/minerals. We also saw a show in the planetarium, and stopped by the solar-powered house. Overall this is a great museum - it should be down in Atlanta!