Highlands, N.C.

When you're motoring down mountain highways this fall, oohing and aahing at all the pretty leaves, you might hanker to high-tail it into the woods.

Paula Thrasher/AJC STAFF (ENLARGE)
A log cabin used by Highland Safari was built in 1934 on privately owned property outside Highlands, N.C., and surrounded by the Chattahoochee National Forest.
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IF YOU GO • Getting there: Take I-85 north to I-985, then continue as highway changes to Ga. 365 and U.S. 441. After driving through Dillard, turn right on Ga. 246, which becomes N.C. 106 after it crosses the state line. The Highland Safari outpost will be on your left at Turtle Pond Road, four miles south of Highlands, N.C. • Schedule: Three-hour off-road safari tours depart daily at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Dinner safaris available by appointment. • Cost: $65, $45 ages 12 and under. • Information: 828-526-9628, Web site.

But better leave the driving to someone who knows what they're doing — and where they're going.

Like the guys at Highland Safari.

The off-road adventure company can take you on a romping ride into the wilderness in a specially outfitted Land Rover the color of a Yellow Cab.

"We'll be going from an 1855 cabin to a 1934 cabin," says guide David McKeen, referring to our journey from the outpost four miles south of Highlands to a homestead on 43 privately owned acres surrounded by the 750,000-acre Chattahoochee National Forest.

Our trek starts out tame enough as driver Randy Martin chugs the 68 horsepower former British military vehicle out on N.C. 106 (aka the Dillard Road). But soon you'll learn that this is not a soft adventure.

The 1973 Series III Land Rover, nicknamed the Cheetah, was purchased by Atlantan Mark Boomershine, who started the business four years ago. Boomershine recently sold out to Mark Wilson, of Highlands, who runs the safari in tandem with his Paradise Island gem-mining and gold-panning tours.

The brawny diesel truck — with a front bull-bar and military-grade tires that can negotiate mud, sand and snow — was originally camouflage olive drab and black before being rebuilt and painted by Tony Woodward of Tony's Land Rover World Florida. It carries up to nine passengers, but today it's just me and the two guides.

As we haul off toward Paradise, the old mining settlement, we stop at the Blue Valley Overlook off N.C. 106. South Carolina is to our left, Georgia to our right.

Turning off the main highway onto Hale Ridge Road, we travel past Jane's Christmas Tree Farm and fields planted in cabbage, pumpkins and squash. Before we run out of paved road, Martin points out an incongruous sight: three columns standing in the yard of a home. As the story goes, they were all that was left of a Baptist church in Gainesville, Ga., when a devastating double tornado struck in 1936. The columns were erected in 1960, perhaps as a monument to the disaster.

By the time we enter the Chattahoochee National Forest, we have left North Carolina and are in Georgia. This vast land, crisscrossed by wagon trails and old logging roads, was once owned by individuals.

"The U.S. bought the land for pennies on the dollar during the Depression," says McKeen. "That's why it's all national forest."

However, a few pockets were not sold and remain the property of the descendants of those who settled along the Three Forks Trail that runs from South Carolina to Rabun Bald in Georgia.

One such parcel is Paradise, once owned by a Rev. Metcalf, who sold it to the McAllister family in 1928. McAllister built the log cabin just up the hill from a creek that still holds deposits of gold, mica and gemstones.

"When it was built, it had running water and indoor plumbing," says Martin. "That was pretty neat for the day. Real uptown for being back in the woods."

As we bounce along the rough roads, Martin and McKeen provide a running commentary, explaining that 18th-century naturalist William Bartram traveled these hills and Hernando de Soto led 600 explorers in search of gold in 1540.

This once was the home of 40 percent of the country's American chestnut trees, which grew to 100 feet and taller and up to 17 feet in diameter before they were wiped out by blight. The trees were cut to become railroad ties and split-rail fences.

Martin says animals are often seen, including bear, deer and bobcat. "The other day, we saw two wild pigs — a sow and a piglet."

Rumbling down a road built in the '30s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, Martin steers into a clearing where he tells a story about a man who, as local legend goes, killed his wife with a rolling pin after swilling moonshine and dragged her to the barn before setting it afire.

Although he was never convicted of the crime, "they say he confessed on his deathbed," says Martin.

On the road to the cabin, the guides point out the entrance to a crystal mine that was opened in 1960 by Mark Wilson's grandfather, Archie Jellen.

Those who've had enough adventure can pick a rocking chair on the porch of the log cabin. But your guides will be happy to show you the pond and creek, where you might pick up a gem or two if you look hard, and the 1 1/2-mile Perimeter Trail or shorter trails to the Lower and Upper Falls.

Out here in this serene green forest that will soon shimmer in reds and golds, there are no ringing cellphones, no blaring radios, no whirring air conditioners — just chirping birds, rushing waterfalls, rustling leaves and the silent glide of a trout through a crystal stream.

That's why they call it Paradise.