It was well after dark when Tom Mills and his family checked into their cabin at George L. Smith State Park, somewhere between Macon and Savannah.

From the back door, Mills could see nothing except 6-year-old daughter Claire and son Trevor, nearly 3, dancing on the porch to the raucous chorus of 10,000 frogs.

Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Tom Mills is chronicling his visits to 30 Georgia parks in 30 days on YouTube.

Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

He edits the footage on his laptop before sending it in.

Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Mills sets up a scene at FDR Roosevelt State Park for a YouTube episode.

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Then daylight came, revealing the view. And dad began to dance, if only metaphorically.

"There was this beautiful flooded cypress forest just 20 feet from the back porch," said Mills. "It was a very nice surprise."

That was the first of many happy surprises Mills discovered on an ambitious, sometimes arduous, family expedition to visit 30 Georgia state parks or historic sites in 30 days. Mills shares those surprises — and moments like Claire and Trevor dancing to frog music — in a series of videos posted on YouTube.

"I'm doing this to promote the parks," said Mills, who for three years has been a member of the board of directors for Friends of Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites, a nonprofit advocacy group. "I'm passionate about the parks and I want others to share that passion."

Mills this spring took a buyout from a Norcross engineering consulting firm, giving him the time for the road trip. As the firm's creative services manager, Mills said, he produced videos of waste water treatment plant tours, giving him the skills to shoot, edit and post the clips.

The videos are part home movie, part GPTV-style documentary.

In every short film — all posted so far are less than eight minutes long — there is an interview with a park manager or ranger.

"I, for one, was tickled to death to talk to someone from the Atlanta area about the site," said Jay Lewis, manager of General Coffee State Park in south Georgia.

Lewis said one visitor even said he came to the park because of the YouTube video.

In most of the videos, Claire provides a little bit of the narration and her brother chucks rocks and sticks.

"Trevor seems to want to throw stuff into any body of water he can find," Mills said in a telephone interview from the road.

There are shots of armadillos and alligators, goats and a gopher tortoise, museums and miniature golf courses. All together, it's a digital sampler of parks and historic sites from the coast to the mountains.

Mills said he originally planned to post videos daily as the family stopped for the night after editing the footage on his Apple laptop. But that pace proved too daunting when you have two kids along for the adventure, Mills said.

The family visited 22 parks and historic sites before the starting this latest leg of the expedition. Videos highlighting 10 parks have been posted so far. The trip ends Sunday at Cloudland Canyon State Park in the northwest corner of the state. It's been a trip of more than 2,000 miles in a Toyota Sequoia getting about 15 miles to the gallon.

And, it's been free of major snafus.

"The only negative," said Tom's wife Cortney Mills, "is that we haven't been able to spend enough time at any one park."

The Mills family is already compiling a list of parks where they want to return. Here are three parks where they'd like to linger:

• George L. Smith State Park: 1,634 acres near Twin City with a 412-acre lake, hiking trails and the refurbished Parrish Mill — an 1880s combination grist mill and saw mill. "I'd love to go back and spend some time paddling in the flooded cypress forest," Tom said.

• General Coffee State Park: 1,511 acres just east of Douglas featuring a recreation of a 19th century farmstead, complete with livestock. "Claire got to hold a three-day-old goat," Cortney said. "The kids so enjoyed the farm."

• Vogel State Park: A 233-acre mountain valley south of Blairsville with a 20-acre lake for swimming and fishing. "I could have spent another week and a half there," said Tom. Cortney said she wants to return also.