They just don’t make them like this anymore. With a winding lane that twists around a central fountain and between brightly painted, gabled buildings, the 78-year-old Chalet Suzanne looks more like an old-world village than a Florida motel. Add a high-end restaurant that’s served celebrities from around the world, a soup factory that’s fed astronauts, and an airstrip atop the highest ridge in peninsular Florida, and the little 26-room hideout in Lake Wales easily scores the classification as unique.

Even after 100 years of mountain solitude, Balsam Mountain Inn, opened in 1908, remains as tranquil as it is painted white. According to one guest when I visited last fall, the leaves beginning their magic show on the hills, "I just sort of fell in love with the rocking chairs on the porch." Couldn't agree more. An added, and often overlooked, bonus to the driveway-wide porch? The restaurant there is fit for a Carolina king.

While researching "Old Salem by Candlelight", (p. 40 in Southern Living's December issue) I took a stroll down Church Street in this historic district of North Carolina.  Four birds waddled out, crossed the street, and bee-lined to a pile of corn kernels scattered in a front yard. 

A local later told me he had heard of a gaggle of vagrant guinea hens inhabiting the neighborhood. 

He thought it was an urban legend.

For a slide show of images from the story, click here.

In Atlanta for the Bama-Florida game—the Tebow Blowout—we Crimson Tiders needed to drown some serious sorrows. Destination: Two Urban Licks, a short cab ride away from the scene of disaster.

Sometimes those little voices in my head offer good advice. I don't know why but while driving to Florida this past fall I bypassed my usual haunts in Montgomery and Ozark, and decided to look for dinner in Dothan. I guess the voices convinced me I needed to try something new. That is, in part, my job as a writer, after all.

"Barbecue is the closest thing we have to cheese in France. It’s our food. There’s no getting around it.”

These words spoken by Patrick Martin of Martin's Barbecue Joint in Nolensville, TN (about 20 miles outside of Nashville), tell of his love for the Que. We're talking God and country love---first kiss love---favorite football team love---the kind of love a man feels when he's found the "one." But his adoration for pulled pork goes far beyond succulent slices of meat layered on greasy buns. With smoke in his hair, fire in his eyes, and barbecue sauce in his veins, this Que connoisseur specializes in the fine art of whole hog cooking--an old-school culinary art form that has him winning recognition by respected pit masters from Memphis to Manhattan.

With one visit to his restaurant---a wooden structure with a large front porch---I knew why.

(Photo by Jennifer V. Cole)

Anyone who has read any of my Tales from the Road posts has surely picked up on a theme. From nostalgic musings on bacon grease to recounting a muddy afternoon spent with feisty pigs in a North Carolina pigsty to my ode to Donald Link's Cochon restaurant--when it comes to pork, I'm like a kid in a candy store. Sometimes I even hear angels.

When I found out that Aaron Deal put a new dish on his lunch menu at Tristan that celebrates pork belly, I had to make a pilgrimage. I don't mean to be sacrilegious, but let's just say I was moved by the porcine spirit.

Houma, Louisiana is true Cajun country, home to some outstanding down-home food. But on a fishing trip a few years ago, I discovered Cristiano's, one of the best restaurants I've visited anywhere in Louisiana. It's a great surprise and worth a drive.

I don't understand the Blues. I don't know the Blues. My dad only played country music on our car trips growing up. I listened to Mariah Carey and REM and Crash Test Dummies as a teenager. And now the songwriters I drift towards like Bon Iver might put Howlin Wolf and Buddy Guy to sleep. It wasn't until I heard Solomon Burke sing "How I Got to Memphis" - a song that to this very day makes me want to call the river city home, just for a little stint, to feel the hurting truth of King Solomon - that the Blues knocked on my door. But even as I write this, the soft, cottony talking Blues angel in my backseat mumbles two words. Muddy. Waters. Yessir, Muddy Waters, my friend.

Yesterday I hit the red leather-bound volumes of Southern Living, starting at the top left corner of the shelves in 1966. What I found felt very much like a time capsule.

Have you heard of CityPass? If not, then listen up: There's no better value offer for exploring Atlanta and Houston (plus other major metropolises outside the South) than CityPass. The booklet of tickets is basically a pocket-sized, front-of-the-line golden ticket to each city's spotlighted attractions. All-in-one for less of a price.

If you were in Houston, you would pay $34 for adults/$24 for kids and recieve entry into Space Center Houston (NASA); Downtown Aquarium; Houston Museum of Natural Science; Houston Zoo; either The Health Museum OR George Ranch Historical Park; either Museum of Fine Arts, Houston OR The Children’s Museum of Houston. The adult value for this package would be more than $65. Plus, the CityPass comes with preferential seating and a free appetizer at one of 33 Landry's restaurants in the city.

If you were in Atlanta, adults pay $69/kids $49 to access World of Coca-Cola; Zoo Atlanta; CNN Atlanta; Georgia Aquarium; High Museum of Art OR the Atlanta History Center; Fernbank Museum of Natural History OR Atlanta Botanical Garden. A normal adults entry into these places would cost nearly $120. The added value in ATL comes for shoppers: Lenox and Phipps malls honor the CityPass with savings options in selected stores.

If you do find yourself in either Houston or Atlanta, I can't help but give my two cents tips for favorites in each. In H-town, Hermann Park is awesome; the reflecting pool and the Sam Houston statue reminds me of the Mall in DC. It's a wonderful morning spot. For Atlanta, I have three words. Get. To. Decatur. Especially for two fantastic restaurants: Brick Store Pub and Cakes and Ale, shown to the left. Stellar.

To read up on both cities, visit our Southern Living's website by clicking on the city names Atlanta and Houston. And before you visit, check into CityPass.

He's become so famous, so significant, so normalized in everydayspeak, John James Audubon's name has eclipsed its birth purpose. He's become a brand, as marketing minds would say.

Born the same year the United States chose the "dollar" as its currency (1785), Audobon led a naturalist's dream-life; he was a Daniel Boone of bird watching, snaking along the South's backwaters and tromping in its woods, all in effort to complete his inspired project he called Birds of America. Though he didn't find and paint all the feathered species (he came close, taking more than 400 to show off in Paris), Audubon left indelible marks on the region as we now know it.

***Above, Audubon's "Mourning Dove," originally called "Carolina Pigeon"