North Georgia is gorgeous, but I couldn't live there because I would inevitably be forced to talk politics with the locals. It's weird that N Georgia is so much more Republican than other mountainous areas in Western North Carolina. Cross the state line and you go from Rabun County GA where Obama got 21% (his best in the region) to Jackson County NC where he got 48%.
Jackson County has both a 10,000 student university (Western Carolina) and part of the Cherokee reservation so its population is about 10% Cherokee. In other words, Jackson is definitely not a typical Appalachian county.
