Helen Georgia Trip Planning

During the pandemic, our small traveling family decided to visit the little Alpine looking town of Helen, Georgia. This post is an introduction to how the Helen trip was planned and how our family travel hacked our way there. You can also read our post on how to travel with a baby.

Other Helen, Georgia destination posts:

• Holiday Inn Express Helen Georgia Review
• Things to do in Helen Georgia
• A road trip to Helen Georgia

Traveling with a family to Helen Georgia

We have a baby in tow for this trip, and if you haven’t read our traveling with a baby post yet, we outline in more detail how we travel with our little one.

First thing we travel planned are stops along the way. Helen is roughly 6 1/2 hours of driving non-stop from Jacksonville, FL without considering traffic. There is no way our baby can make it that long in the car seat in one go.

The first iteration included an overnight stop in Macon, GA. It’s around 4 hours from Jacksonville, Fl and we would stay at the Marriott Downtown for 16k Marriott points.

Our family would leave at kid’s naptime and wing it. If he makes it all the way to Macon in one go then great. If not, we will stop along the way (more on that later).

Alas, it was not meant to be. We had to change our plans because of work so ended up booking the Hampton Inn at Tifton, GA.

Why Visit Helen?

Why did we choose to visit Helen? It all started with a brochure. When we travel, we look at the shelf with tourism magazines and brochures just to see what else we can do in the area the next time we visit.

People might think these are outdated when we have the internet but no, I believe the power of magazines and printed materials still linger more than photos seen online.

We saw that Helen was within a 2 hour drive from Atlanta. It looked like a German town and seems interesting. At the time, we has not been to Germany yet nor do we have time to do day trips since our Atlanta plan was to get there and back to Jacksonville on a 3 day weekend.

The plan to visit Helen was shelved for another day. Until 2020, that is, when we decided to see the world on a road trip (within the US).

Should I Stay in Hotels or Cabins in Helen?

Since our family has a few hotel points, we opted to go for the hotel option instead of staying in a cabin in the woods. While the cabin is appealing since we can be one with nature, the hotel meant that we are within walking distance from downtown.

Walking distance meant that we can run and grab food if need be or go back to the hotel so the baby can go nap. Hotels are also likely to have cribs or pack n plays available for use instead of lugging our pack and play from our house to the places we need to visit.

Our family chose to stay at the Holiday Inn Express Helen. You can read more about our review in another post, but we stayed for 2 nights at 20,000 points a night, a total of 40,000 points. The hotel was going for around $200/night, making it a 1c per point redemption. Quite good for an IHG hotel.

One can opt to rent cabins through Airbnb or through Groupon (within Unicoi State Park). One can also rent condo-apartment units.

Activities in Helen Georgia

Since we were traveling with a baby, a lot of our activities were limited. We will cover more of that in our things to do in Helen, Georgia post.

We went with our own car, so we were free to go from place to place. The Holiday Inn Express had free parking, so we did not have to pay for any parking fees throughout the trip. We also walked everywhere possible while downtown.

For those who are planning to visit Helen with a baby, we brought a stroller since the baby was pretty heavy. There are sidewalks available so walking downtown is not an issue.

We created a comprehensive post on things to do in Helen to aide in your trip planning too!

Our Journey to Helen Georgia

Thanks for reading our intro post to Helen, Georgia. It is a really quaint Bavarian town close to the Tennessee-Georgia border. This is a great road trip destination if living within the Southeast US. It gives you a chance to go to Germany without leaving the country.

Have any of you been to Helen, Georgia or the surrounding areas? Please leave comments below if you have any suggestions for us to visit on future road trips too!