I wouldn't drive across the south.
I'm scared to even fly in a plane over the southern United States.
I drove across the South (from Virginia through Georgia all the way on to New Orleans and Texas) on a foolhardy postgraduate cross-country trip from Boston to LA. The southern stretch was enlightening and depressing at the same time. I had a prejudice much like Tom's understanding of the South of Klan meetings, cross burnings and a lot of folks who were still fighting the Civil War in their heads who would give a Yankee like me a bad reception. I found a lot of the south delightful though, full of friendly people and particularly beautiful countryside. The worst reaction I got was from a cashier at a Cajun restaurant who didn't appreciate my East Coast motormouth ordering.
There was a lot of some ugliness as well, with an Alabama rest stop dedicated with an overly large and prominent plaque of George Wallace (to whose nose I stuck my chewing gum). Alabama was also the first and only place I was called "suh" by a deferential black man in a way that made me think of the paternalistic scenes from
In the Heat of the Night, an incident that still makes me uncomfortable. While the South is still not Martin Luther King's dream, it has a lot of redeeming aspects that are worth experiencing.
And although the abstinence part is alarming enough (I did the long distance thing with my girlfriend that I met at college for a while and the stretches were difficult but not a deal breaker). I agree with Beth though, the real thing that appalls me is the dry wedding reception. Now I've been to a few receptions where folks have made asses of themselves because of alcohol, but since my girlfriend and I seem to know a few people who are or happened to marry conservative nutjobs, we've also been to a couple of dry receptions that are by far less enjoyable overall than the few that are spoiled by drunkenness. I rarely go on anti-right wing rants, but nights full of fruit punch and the stupid Electric Slide leave me angrily asking my girlfriend if these people are fundamentalists, why do they conveniently forget Jesus Christ's first miracle?