Senior Editor
Beat: Things to Do, Cabin Rentals, Downtown
Darlene has written about north Georgia's mountain counties for fourteen years and runs this desk. She owns the pages where a wrong detail costs somebody a day: the railway's published season, what is shut in February, which local claim is a claim rather than a fact. She quotes prices as bands, and says plainly when a number is unconfirmed.
4 guides · 3 news posts
Last updatedDarlene's most recent update to this site was .
Long-form
Reported guides to Blue Ridge, each with its own publication and last-updated date.
Twenty-six miles up the Toccoa and back, with two hours on the Georgia-Tennessee line in the middle. The choices that matter are made at booking, not at the depot.
7 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
Two nights, one big thing per day, and a grocery stop before the last winding miles. An itinerary built around how long the driving actually takes.
6 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
A town of 1,250 people, a county where nine in ten residents live outside any town at all, and three centres that point in three different directions. Here is how it fits together.
6 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
The driveway is steeper than the photograph, the signal goes a mile before the gate, and the wood stove wants seasoned wood. What a cabin weekend in Fannin County actually involves.
9 min read
Photograph: Unsplash
News desk
Shorter, dated pieces about what is changing in Blue Ridge.
How this was written. News published under Darlene Pickett's byline was drafted by machine from primary sources — operator notices, government and municipal releases, published schedules — and every factual claim in it was matched to one of those sources before it published. A Blue Ridge Guide editor can change or pull any of it. Our editorial standards.
A bear that finds food at one cabin works its way along the whole ridge. Which is why owners care about the bins far more than guests expect them to.
Photograph: Unsplash
Twenty-six miles up the Toccoa and back. The choice that matters is whether you want the two-hour layover on the state line, and it has to be made at booking.
Photograph: Unsplash
Six events come round every year in downtown Blue Ridge. The months are dependable, the weekends are not, and booking on last year's date is how people get caught.
Photograph: Unsplash