Branson may be known as the Music Show Capital of the World, but it also enjoys a wonderful natural setting in the Ozark Mountains. Visitors see two mountain lakes as they make their way around town; further away from the famous Highway 76, Dogwood Canyon Nature Park is a welcome respite for nature lovers.

It takes a bit of a drive to get to Dogwood Canyon, which sits on the border of Missouri and Arkansas. Groups that make out are in for a treat, though. This 10,000-acre nature preserve highlights some of the most beautiful geological features of the Ozarks: deep limestone canyons, caves, ponds, waterfalls and other impressive formations. Paved sidewalks and rougher trails wind throughout the park, giving visitors a variety of ways to explore. Groups can come in to the welcome center together, and then split up to do different activities such as walking/hinking, bicycle tours, ATV rides and Segway tours.

I chose to explore the park on horseback. Though many of the other activity options take visitors through the wooded paths at the bottom of the canyon, horseback adventures begin at a corral at the top side of the park. I took a one-hour guided ride, along with a friend from the Branson Area CVB. During the ride, our guide took us up and down trails that cut across the top of Ozark hills overlooking Dogwood Canyon. We rode slowly, going by the pastures where the park staff is raising a herd of bison, and through fields where other "off-duty" horses roamed freely, enjoying the sunshine on a warm April morning.

The trail rides are easy, relaxed activities that almost anyone could do, and guides can accomodate groups of up to 12 people on each ride. Twice a week, the guides take more advanced riders out on half-day excursions. Bigger groups can have their own experiences on tram rides through the park, which last two hours and include visits to the bison and elk pastures. During the summer months, groups can have a chuckwagon dinner in the fields during the tram tour of the park.

Macon sits at Georgia's intersectoin of history and music. There are plenty of great attractions to visit duirng a tour of the city, but my favorite during my short visit was The Big House: The Allman Brothers Band Museum.

The Allman Brothers were one of the pioneering bands in the music today called Southern Rock, blending traditional rock 'n' roll, country, jazz and blues styles. During the early 1970s, the band lived, wrote and rehearsed in a rented house on a hill overlooking downtwon Macon.

"They moved in here in 1970 as an unknown band," said E.J. Devokaitis, the museum's curator. "By the time they left in 1973, they were one of the most popular bands in the country, but they had lost their two leaders in motorcycle accidents."

Visitors to the house today will find that it has been transformed into a museum that pays tribute to the band and their musical achievements. Near the entrance, a television plays a continuous loop of live concert footage, helping to familiarize guests with the bands' characteristic dual-guitar solos and other signature sounds.

From there, galleries throughout the house help to tell the bands' story, illustrating it along with way with various instruments, props, costumes and other artifacts from the group's heyday. Music buffs will marvel at the numerous drums and unique electric guitars on display. Other exhibit areas deal with life on the road, the band's touring crew and the equipment necessary to stage a 1970s rock show.

Upstairs, two of the house's bedrooms have been re-decorated as they were during the band's time living there, with the help of one of the founding members' wives. Visitors can also see the re-created "getaway room," where the musicians and their families would escape the music business proceedings downstairs to relax in a typical 1970s "hippie's" den.

I'm not old enough to have remembered the Allman Brothers in their heydey. But after an hour exploring this museum, I came away with a great appreciation for these musicians and how they helped to shape the modern musical landscape.

The museum's front rooms now house museum displays.

An original Allman Brothers drum set.

Artwork memorializes the band and their era of rock 'n' roll.

You may not expect to find a tourism attraction at at Catholic monastery, much less one in suburban Georgia. But in Conyers, the Monastery of the Holy Spirit has become a must-see location for groups touring the area.

A group of Trappist monks from Kentucky established this monastery decades ago, living in a barn and doing farm work in the nearby fields. Over the years, the monastery grew to include a church, workshops and more comfortable living quarters. Several years ago, the monks decided to embrace tourism as a means of creating some revenue and giving the public a look into their interesting lifestyle.

Today, the monks have created a first-rate visitor experience. The old barn in which they once lived has been transformed into the Monastic Heritage Center, with a great museum-style exhibit that details a day in the life of a monk. Visitors can see an example of the brothers' early sleeping quarters, some of the clothes that they wear, and the different trades that they ave learned to help make the monastery as self-sustaining as possible. The exhibits also outline the monks' daily schedule, from their first prayer service at 4:15 a.m. through their community meals and nighttime rituals.

After an introduction in the museum, group members have a number of options. They can visit the monastery's abbey — a sparsely decorated church by Catholic standards — and even join in a mass or prayer service if one is in session. They can also tour the gardens, where some of the brothers have honed their skills as master bonsai sculptors, or visit the on-site bookstore. A cafe adjacent to the bookstore sells deli sandwiches and other snacks, and gives diners an opportunity to have a peaceful, reflective meal.

It's funny to think about tourism and monastic life working well together. But at the monastery of the Holy Spirit, the brothers seem to have struck the perfect balance.

Monastic Heritage Center

A display of historic monks' habits.

The abbey's colorful, geomtric stained-glass windows.

There are few places in the United States so impacted by the Civil War as Atlanta. The city famously burned after Union general Sherman captured it in 1864. Today, nearly 150 years later, the events are still a striking part of the Atlanta story.

There are plenty of places around the city that shed light on the Civil War battles that happened here and the scars that they left. But for visitors who want to get a broad overview of the war, its causes and effects, the best place to start is the Atlanta History Center. This museum has a variety of exhibits that deal with Atlanta's past, including a large section called "Turning Point: The American Civil War Experince."

"This is one of the one of the largest collection s of Civil War memorabilia on display in the country," said Brandi Wigley, the museum's senior manager of community initiatives. "It tells the human side of the Civil War."

The exhibit has all of the common display pieces that you would expect to find: guns, uniforms, cannons, maps, photographs, etc. But it also does a great job of distilling the major causes and movements of the Civil war into easy-to-understand pieces. Visitors begin in a section calld "War of Ideals," that deals with the motivations of each side that led to the outbreak of war. As the experience progresses, displays mark the turning points that took place in each year of the war, and mark the important shifts in strategy, economy and national attitude that eventually led to the Union's victory.

I really appreciated the way that the museum made the war easy for me to understand. And the artifacts on display helped to illustrate some of the realities of the conflict that aren't apparent simply from reading a text pannel. One of the most striking images I came across was a collection of "war ordinance" -- dozens of shells, mortars and cannonballs that were used in battle. The small ones were the size of a grapefruit; the larger ones could be twice the size of a modern bowling ball. The size and number of these weapons helped me to understand just how scary action on the battlefield must have been, and how much bravery was displayed by those who fought.

The exhibit ended with a poingant discussion of reconstruction, reconcilliation and the legacy that the war left on Atlanta and the nation. Many of the issues at play in the mid-19th century still affect us today. But great, moving exhibits like this can help us all to understand just how far we've come.

The exhibit showcases both artifacts and attitudes.

War Ordinance

Re-creation of a Confederate encampment

Barrington Hall

Roswell, Georgia, has all of the characteristic elements of a Southern village — a picturesque town square, a lush green park with a white bandstand and a historic river mill. But Roswell also has something that most of the other small towns around Atlanta don't — a trio of antebellum homes.

"Roswell has three antebellum homest ath are open for tour three days a week," said Marsha Saum, tourism sales manager at the Historic Roswell Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We call them the Southern Trilogy."

Civil War buffs know that Atlanta and much of the surrounding area were largely destroyed by Sherman and his troops in 1864. But Roswell escaped the path of Sherman's destruction, and today the Southern Trilogy gives visitors perhaps the best look into what the lifestyle of the Atlanta-area elites would have been like in the time before the Civil War.

During the short time I had to tour Roswell, Marsha and I made stops at all of the homes. The first, Bulloch Hall, is a temple-style Greek Revival mansion built in 1839. The family that lived there were influential members of the area — Margaret Mitchell once wrote about them in a newspaper article — and ancestors of president Theodore Roosevelt. The home has furnishings from the period, along with the stories of both family members and slaves that spent time at the estate.

The second member of the trilogy, Barrington Hall, is another classical Southern mansion. The most notable aspect of this home is its antebellum garden — curators and local gardeners have gone to great lengths to re-create the garden that the home's original owners planted in the back yard. The garden features historic heirloom botanicals, planted in the same arrangements that the property's first gardener created.

An estate called Smith Plantation rounds out the trilogy. Smith Plantation features 100 percen original furnishings, so groups visiting today will see a home interior that looks just the way it did when the Smith family lived there. The home also has 10 intact outbuildings, including slave's quarters, an ice house, corn crib, guest cabins and a covered well.

On a perfectly sunny spring day, these beautiful homes and the flowers blooming around them made Roswell seem as picturesque as possible.

Barrington Hall's antebellum garden

Dogwoods blooming on the grounds of Smith Plantation

Elaborate costumes, screaming crowds and police escorts — this must be what it feels like to be a rock star.

No, I'm not on tour with Lady Gaga. I'm in Biloxi, Mississippi for Mardi Gras, the yearly Fat Tuesday celebration that preceeds Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season. And on this warm, sunny February Tuesday, the people of Mississippi's Gulf Coast are preparing for a giant party.

Mardi Gras parades may be most famous in New Orleans, but the tradition originated in Alabama and has spread to cities all along the Gulf Coast, from Texas to Florida. After New Orleans, Biloxi has one of the biggest Mardi Gras parades in the region, with more than 120 floats and a crowd of more than 100,000 onlookers. And while the idea of Mardi Gras has been tainted by some Big Easy debauchery, the festivities in Biloxi (and most other destionations) are safe and family-friendly.

That doesn't, however, mean that they are boring. Walking around the float staging area today before the parade began, I saw a motley assortment of characters loading up onto colorfully decorated floats. The cast ranged from the elaborately costmed King and Queen of Mardi Gras to pirates, soldiers, Angry Birds, bananas and many more. These folks are all affiliated with the various local businesses and "krewes" (social clubs) that sponsored floats in the Mardi Gras parade. In the hours before the parade began, they loaded untold millions of plastic beads onto their floats (as well as food and drinks), and pumped up music from on-board loudspeakers to help set a festive mood.

The real fun began when the floats took off down the parade route. The Mississippi Gulf Convention and Visitors Bureau enters a float in the parade each year, and invited me to join them and some other journalist as a participant in the parade. So I climed to the top of our double decker float, claimed my spot on the left side, and warmed up my throwing arm.

To describe the experience as exciting would be a severe understatment. From the time our float turned the first corner on the parade route, we were met with the enthusiastic screams of thousands of revelers. Of course, they weren't exactly screaming for us, but for the colorful strands of beads that we tossed out into the crowd. It's amazing how much excitement a strand of beads can stir up in the most unlikely of people. All along the parade route, we passed an endless number of people who eagerly clamored for our beads. The thrill seemed to transcend normal social barriers, uniting people of every age, sex, race and social circle into one giant party.

And so for two hours, I threw my heart out, launching hundreds or thousands of strands of beads into the crowd — in such an energetic atmosphere, it's impossible to keep count. Some parade-goers attracted my throwing attention with interesting costumes and funny signs. Others simply made me take notice with their wild hand-waving and enthusiastic screams. Many times, the person who caught the beads that I threw would shoot me a smile, a wave or a wink of gratitude. It's a fun and rewarding feeling.

At the end of the two-hour parade, my throwing arm was sore, and I wore a permanent smile plastered on my face. If you ever get a chance to ride a Mardi Gras float, you simply must do it. And anyone looking for a great mid-winter party should begin making plans to attend Mardi Gras in 2013.

Revelers loading up a parade float

A line of beads at my throwing station

Visitors check outthe floats before the parade begins

The Gulf Coast's 2012 King of Mardi Gras

Float riders get in to the spirit of Marid Gras

An elaborately decorated Mardi Gras float

When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in 2005, it made its mark on Mississippi's gulf coast. In Gulfport and Biloxi, the storm destroyed casinos, museums, homes and other structures; the nearby town of Bay St. Louis suffered incredible damage. But in the years since, the towns along the Mississippi coastline have rebuilt and renewed themselves, making the most of the story and welcoming visitors to learn about it.

I toured Bay St. Louis and parts of Biloxi today, seeing both evidence of the storm and the rebuilding that has taken place since then. We began in Bay St. Louis, the town that was hit the hardest. Though much of town has been rebuilt, several historic structures further inland survived. These include the Depot, a historic train station that now serves as a visitors center, and St. Rose de Lima Church. Another survivor is 100 Men DBA Hall, a historic music venue that was part of the "Chitlin Circuit" of blues joints throughout Mississippi in the early 20th century. Today the building is preserved as a historic site that groups can visit to learn about the rich African American cultural history of the area.

Downtown, Bay St. Louis has been almost completely rebuilt. Visitors will find numerous art galleries, craft shops and antique stores, which make an afternoon downtown a colorful event. The area also has a number of restaurants that serve seafood fresh from the Gulf, as well as other Southern specialties.

In Biloxi, several landmarks along the coast symbolize the city's resilience and recovery. During the storm, a surge of saltwater flooded inland areas, and many of the area's live oak trees died as a result of soaking in saltwater for eight hours or more. Rather than uproot these trees, locals fired up their chainsaws and carved them into beautiful outdoor sculptures, which both decorate the area and serve to memorialize the events of 2005.

Another symolic structure is the 1848 lighthouse that stands outside of Biloxi's visitors center. This white metal lighthouse has been an icon of the city for years, and locals and visitors alike were thrilled to see that the lighthouse survived the storm. Today, groups can take a tour of the small lighthouse, clmibing the circular stairway to the top for a look at the historic lamp and magnification lens, as well as a great view of Biloxi and the coastline.

Groups should also make time to visit Biloxi's Hurricane Katrina Memorial. Constructed by the crew of TV's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," this monument combines a colletion of items found scattered around town after the storm with a stately monument honoring those who lost their lives in the hurricane. The monument also has live oak that was masterfully carved and painted to create a tribute sculpture.

A tour of the Katrina sites in the area gives visitors an understanding of the storm and the damage it created in the community. But more moving than that lesson in history is the beauty of the communities that have reemerged, stronger and prouder than ever.

100 Men DBA Hall is part of Mississippi's Blues Trail

Clay Creations is one of sevral art galleries in Bay St. Louis

A colorful gift shop in downtown Bay St. Louis

Biloxi's 1848 lighthouse

Found objects on display at Biloxi's Hurricane Katrina Memorial

Most coastal destinations are known more for their beaches and resorts than for art and architecture. But in Biloxi, the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum is one of the region's cheif attractions, showcasing the work of a famous local artist in an architectural setting that is an acheivement in itself.

I'm spending a few days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to celebrate Mardi Gras. While the big festivities are still a couple of days away, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau staff is showing me and some other journalists around the area, beginning with a reception and tour of the Ohr-O'keefe Museum.

The museum highlights the work of George Ohr, a local artist who billed himself as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi." Ohr's "madness" was probably more of a marketing ploy than a real mental illness, but the artwork he produced was brilliant nonetheless. The museum displays numerous pieces of Oh'rs pottery inside a star-shaped gallery, which also features some funny Orh quotes painted on the walls.

The unusual shape of the gallery is part of its architectural design. World-renowned architect Frank Ghery designed the museum, adding a touch of high architecture to the Gulf Coast skyline. Rather than creating one large museum building, Ghery designed the museum as a campus of several small gallery buildings, seperated by landscaped outdoor areas. Passing from one gallery to the next, visitors get a great view of beach, which sits just across the highway from the museum.

In addition to Ohr's pottery, the museum has a gallery with a wonderful collection of African American art. A changing exhibit gallery hosts two different exhibitinos each year, which can feature painting, sculpture and other works by area artists. The museum also has a great visitors center and gift shop, as well as a re-creation of a cabin built by a Biloxi African American family in the 1880s.

Ongoing work at the museum is repairing damage from Hurricane Katrina and opening new buildings that will enable the staff to expand exhibition space.

The museum's African American art gallery

Orh pottery displayed in the star-shaped gallery

A George Ohr quote

Inside the museum's Pleasant Reed House, a re-created 1880s home

Aquariums are some of my favorite places to visit as I travel around the country. There's sometime about coming face-to-face with exotic ocean creatures that thrills me in a way that museums and historic sites simply can't.

At Newport Aquarium, part of Newport on the Levee in Northern Kentucky, I got an up-close glimpse at hundreds of creatures, both domestic and exotic. This million-gallon aquarium features nine main exhibits, which give visitors opportunities to see marine animals from both local freshwwater and faraway oceans. The most exciting section of the aquarium is the "Surrounded by Sharks" tank, a wrap-around exhibit that has visitors walking through clear acryilic tunnels in a ginat tank as eight or nine species of sharks swim above and around their heads. It's the closest you'll ever come to deep-sea immersion without a wetsuit, and the closest you'd ever want to be to these critters without a shark cage.

I also enjoyed exhibits that showcased some of the aquarium's less ferocious residents. My co-worker Stacey and I stood mesmerized at the "Kingdom of the Penguins" exhibit, watching these lumbering birds plop off of the rocks and glide through the water with effortless ease and impressive speed. In the aquarium's aviary, we got up close to parrots and other colorful, exotic birds that pearched in low tree branches just above our heads. Some other visitors stopped to pose for pictures with the birds, who stood gently on their outstretched fingers.

My favorite display, though, was the jellyfish. These simple, translucent creatures simply amaze me — you can see right through their bodies, watching their heads undulate and their long, whispy tentatcles flutter as they ply their way through the water. The dark environment and neon lights behind the tanks give the jellies an otherworldly glow. And when you think about it, a visit to the aquarium is as close to another world as most of us will ever dare to venture.

Up close with exotic birds.

A facinating world of darkness and neon light in the jellyfish exhibit.

I visited the Creation Museum last week as part of a daylong editorial research trip in Northern Kentucky. There's a lot to think about in a museum that deals with such weighty subject matter as the origins of human existence and the search for absolute truth; at the end of the visit, though, two main thoughts filled my mind.

First, I was very pleasantly surprised by the scope and quality of this museum. Some museums that are closely tied to faith are also seen as haphazard or amateur, but the display design and educational content in this museum stand up to other major natural history museums in the U.S. And the museum planners didn't skimp on their vision — this $27 million facility features a planetarium, a theater, two cafes and a number of impressive dioramas and animatronic exhibits. Throughout the exhibits, the museum makes a clear, cogent case for creationism, dealing with questions about evolution, the fossil record, Noah's flood and dinosaurs, with displays that will please both casual visitors and those seeking scientific answers. The idea perpetuated by some critics that this museum is but a naive, superstitious Christian attraction is simply untrue.

The quality of the museum and its exhibits led to my second main thought as I left: If this facility were dinky, cheap, unscientific or poorly put together, it would be very easy to write it off and ignore the message of its content. But because the exhibits are thorough, compelling and well-presented, they engender a real dialogue about the origins of our universe. The Creation Museum has many enthusiastic fans — and also plenty of outspoken critics — but the fact that it is a controversial attraction doesn't diminish the importantece of its subject matter. If nothing else, the greatest success of this place may be that it forces visitors to deal with very important questions about human life, God and the search for eternal meaning. A visit to this museum makes honest thinkers seriously consider what they believe, and why they believe it.

A room-sized exhbit depicts the construction of Noah's ark.

This exhibit presents numerous natural phenomenon that seem to defy evolutionary theory.

The museum takes a firm (and controversial) stand about the source of truth and morality in the world.