Atlanta... She does have a point, and yeah, you'll want the pistol. It's a shitty city indeed, like a ghetto 8million+ strong; I moved to PNW to get away from all that shit. There is the Coca Cola museum if you like Coke. Uh, Tyler Perry movies are made there, perhaps you could be an extra in Madea's Christmas special? KKK does rallies on Stone Mtn. IIRC. Most of the southern cities are just boring as fuck IMO/E. They're all the same for the most part. There's a lot of cool shit outside of the city. A lot of Civil War battles were fought there and there's a lot of historical stuff to see.
My list of shit to stay away from is much larger than my to do list in Atlanta. However, I can always keep myself amused for a week or so just about anywhere new. Good museums can do it for me, I spent most of my time in Amsterdam in museums and old churches. Didn't have enough time to come close to seeing it all, you could spend a month in the national museum and never see it all. I'm sure Atlanta has some good museums given it's size, but they won't be anything on par with great European museums or the Smithsonian. Probably a good Civil War museum, I'd be shocked if they didn't.
If you drive south, you'll run into Ft. Benning and Ft. Benning has an AWESOME infantry museum. It's a must see, if you go please post pictures here for others to see what I'm talking about. It's not big and the collection outside is kind of pitiful, but inside is filled with treasures. They have the OICW rifles from 60's up to modern times (never seen one in person anywhere else) and rifles put up against the M4 that all lost, several you've never seen. A real G11. Two nuclear mortars. Polished, solid brass Gatling guns with carriage and caisson. Some of the saddest letters ever. Awards and uniforms of historical figures like Audie Murphy and Sgt. York. A giant bronze Hitler head that was cut off and turned upside down for use as a garbage can. Solid gold scepters that Hitler's high command carried. I spent two or three days there when I was in Airborne hold in fall '01. My "battle buddy" from basic was on guard duty, who was the only other person on the museum floor, so I got to spend those 2-3 days all alone in there, but I'm a museum hound, I look at EVERYTHING. You'd probably be good to spend half a day in there and fart around some on post (there are a lot of historical sites there as a matter of fact). Check it out. Don't know if you have military ID or not or what the deal is with civilians now --I'd imagine they'd let you into the museum at least.
To the north you'll run into Chickamauga --a HUGE battlefield just south of Chattanooga. Also to the north you'll run into the Appalachians and karst topography... It's beautiful. There's a lot of hiking out there and IMO/E, is the best place in the country to hike. I'm sure everyone has their own take on that, but for me it's still that armpit of AL, GA and TN. Not sure if they have any caves near Atlanta that are worth going to, but there are a lot of awesome caves in that part of the country; one in AL may be the largest cave/longest cave on Earth with over 100miles of caverns IF they can prove two "smaller" caves connect.
It may seem like a long drive, but on the highways there it takes no time.
