Warm Springs and Callaway Gardens May 20 2004

If the Atlanta traffic provides you with enough thrills and "extreme" exertions, you'll appreciate a getaway that keeps the adrenaline level low. The Pine Mountain/Warm Springs area, located about 70 miles south, provides plenty of venues to chill out.

Start at Callaway Gardens' (706-663-2281, www.callawaygardens.com) Day Butterfly Center, North America's largest glass-enclosed tropical conservatory. With up to 1,000 butterflies and lots of exotic foliage, it resembles the kind of lair where James Bond villains might kick back — only with tour groups from grade schools and retirement homes walking around.

For lunch, try the Callaway Gardens Country Store, which is just outside the resort grounds on Pine Mountain ridge. The restaurant offers a lovely view and meets minimum country store requirements: pecan logs, muscadine preserves, fried catfish and peach-flavored sweet tea served in Mason jars.

You'll get a more spectacular vista if you bring some grub to Dowdell's Knob, a rocky overlook about nine miles away in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park (706-663-4858, http://gastateparks.org/ info/fdr). Roosevelt visited the area many times for polio treatments in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, and Dowdell's Knob, with its commanding view of Pine Mountain Valley, provided his favorite spot for al fresco dining. You can even see the grill the president used, although the sunken portion in which the food was actually cooked has been cemented over. The commemorative plaque says, "It was filled in order to preserve it." Sounds like logic on the order of "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

History buffs will want to check out the FDR Little White House State Historic Site (706-655-5870, www.fdr-littlewhitehouse.org), as well as the newly opened FDR Memorial Museum. The actual town of Warm Springs is a charming village that affords an hour or two of snacking and window-shopping. But if you want to work off your meal or work out the kinks from being on the road, try walking the more than four-mile Dowdell's Knob Loop trail, a segment of the 23-mile Pine Mountain Trail. There's no better way to find out how big a knob it really is.