Downtown Gainesville is home to a unique interplanetary adventure

GAINESVILLE, Ga. - Space tourism has been in the headlines lately, but unless you’ve saved up a few hundred thousand dollars, you’re probably not getting a ticket to blast off anywhere.

But good news: we found a way you can explore the entire solar system — from the sun to Pluto — without ever spending a dime.

This morning on Good Day Atlanta, we took a short trip up to Gainesville (no rocket needed) to check out the city’s Solar System Walking Tour. The 1.8-mile self-guided walking tour begins at the Gainesville square and extends to the end of Longwood Park on Lake Lanier, and features a scale model of the solar system (that’s a 1:2,000,000,000 scale, by the way) with monuments marking major features including planets, dwarf planets, and even the asteroid belt. The Solar System Walking Tour was created by the North Georgia Astronomers Millennial Project — and, according to Explore Gainesville, is one of only 13 such scale models in the world.

Speaking of Explore Gainesville (the city’s convention and visitors bureau), a few of our new friends from the organization tagged along on our out-of-this-world adventure this morning, filling us in on some of the exciting new attractions in the city and pointing them out as we made the 3.6-mile round trip.

To check out a map of the Solar System Walking Tour and to learn more about the unique feature, click here. And click the video player in this article for a peek at our morning journeying to infinity and beyond…without ever leaving the ground!