When it feels like the earth is spinning just a little too fast, there’s no place like the family-friendly Deep South to slow it down. So even though as a confirmed Yankee I’ve always felt it necessary to look down on Dixie, last summer I couldn’t resist tagging along on a trip that my mother, Pam – a diehard “Gone with the Wind” fan – had been planning for some time. With the help of Triple A, she had it all mapped it out (somewhat inaccurately, but that’s what highway rest stops are for). My cousin Sandra would be behind the wheel of our Avis rental car, which would be equipped with talking GPS. My chief duty would be to keep a lookout for fried green tomatoes, and who could resist that?

The linchpin of the trip (other than Scarlett O’Hara, of course) was my brother, an attorney who recently purchased a house – his first – outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, also named Pam. This was the family pilgrimage aspect, and we wanted to see the new place firsthand. Inspections passed and high marks given (his DVD library even had “Bambi” – talk about slowness therapy), the thoughtful pair stocked up our rental car with nibbles from Trader Joe’s and off we went on our six-day odyssey.

With some difficulty, at first. We couldn’t figure out how to turn down the volume on the GPS device, so with a storm trooper voice barking directions at regular intervals, we missed the exit to the 495 South and ended up circling Reagan National Airport. Twice. After I disabled the thing and produced a good old-fashioned map, the satellite radio kicked in, with news of Hurricane Katrina and lifelike sound effects pouring in. The fact of my cousin’s son being stuck in New Orleans during the worst of it brought it closer to home. But we sailed down I-95 and made it to our first stop, Chapel Hill, N.C., without another hitch.

The presence of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill gives the town a looser vibe than you’ll find in most other towns in the Tar Heel State. We stayed at the elegant Carolina Inn, built in 1924 and partly modeled after Mt. Vernon. After two nights there, we barreled down the interstate. And mannerly Charleston was indeed worth speeding to. Its scores of outstanding mansions, many built between 1686 and 1878, exude charm. We stayed at two of them, reborn as Historic Hotels of America: The John Rutledge House (Rutledge was a signer of the Constitution) and the Wentworth Mansion, the latter built in 1886 but hipped up with the recent addition of a spa – in the former stable, no less. Mom was smart enough to schedule a massage one morning while Sandra and I fortified ourselves with homemade grits.

Southern hospitality overflows in Charleston. Horse-drawn carriages take visitors on narrated tours through the city’s elegant streets, providing a proper introduction to the city. Beautiful townhouses notwithstanding, my favorite discovery of the tour was the Old Exchange Building, built in 1771 and something of the Southern equivalent of the Old State House in Boston. During the Revolutionary War, American patriots were held captive in the Provost Dungeon in the lower level, which we made time to visit afterwards.

As we meandered around Charleston’s cobblestone streets, memories of I-95 faded but thoughts of really good fried green tomatoes loomed large (the ones in North Carolina were just so-so). I asked a cool salesgirl in a home design boutique where the locals go to dine, and without missing a beat she said, “Fleet’s Landing.” So off we went to one of Charleston’s newest restaurants, in a building on the harbor once used by the U.S. Navy and now home to Low Country cooking with a twist, such as a fried green tomato stack with local blue crab salad and fried oysters with Southern Comfort barbecue sauce. For dessert there was a simple dish of chocolate and ice cream from a local dairy – heavenly – drizzled with yummy candied pecans that I didn’t even have to ask for.

The last major stop on our tour was Savannah, a town steeped in secrets and half hidden charms. Savannah lacks Charleston’s uniform air of affluence, but what it does have is those wispy Savannah oaks, a layout that survives from colonial times which is based on a series of park-like squares united in a compact, strollable grid, and some ravishing architecture where you might never expect it.

It also has the best fried green tomatoes in the South. Period. You’ll find them, along with real biscuits and mmm-good Southern fried chicken, at a popular spot singled out early on by my cousin called the Lady and Sons.

We rounded out our visit with a terrific private coach tour – my mother’s idea – led by Oglethorpe Tours that included a walk through the lush Bonaventure Cemetery. Surprises there included the gravesite of Johnny Mercer, composer of popular melodies like “Moon River,” and the numerous tombs that proudly bore the Confederate cross.

I think we all could have lingered in moody, steamy Savannah for at least another couple of days, but our trip wound down as the long road leading back to the nation’s capital stretched ahead. This is one trip I wouldn’t have undertaken without my family’s planning, but sometimes inspiration comes from the most familiar places.

Mr. Grant is based in Paris.