Yeah, this is not going to go well. Any list of places to shop around Lake Lanier is bound to leave off wonderful shops on town squares. Personally, I’m happy to live near about 20 Dollar General stores and a few places for clothes, motorcycle parts, ammo and a new pair boots every year or so.
Your idea of shopping might include browsing around Home Depot, Ikea, bakeries, furniture stores, sporting goods outlets or somewhere you can get a pair of slinky undies for $50.
As the poster child for men who hate to shop, let me say that I never go to these places. They might, in fact, be out of existence; however, I think they’re still in business.
(Believe it or not … moments after I wrote that sentence a giant bolt of lightning crashed nearby.)
Places to Shop Around Lake Lanier
Yes, I am a professional travel writer. Yes, it’s a better job than you imagine, but freelance writers pay their own way (to Maine three times in recent years, for example). Most of the time, I pay for my meals and write honest reviews of restaurants that don’t even know I was there.
I am also professionally cheap. If an outdoor mall with a bazillion shops that sell everything imaginable bills itself as “premium” I wave as I ride by on my motorcycle, without stopping.
If you believe shopping is “fun” you will love North Georgia Premium Outlets, located on the northwestern side of Lake Lanier, not far from Dawsonville and/or Gainesville.
North Georgia Premium Outlets is an outdoor Georgian-style village located 45 minutes north of Atlanta on Highway 400. Shop more than 140 outlet designer and name-brand outlet stores including Burberry, Coach, Gap Outlet, Nike, Pottery Barn Outlet, and Polo Ralph Lauren Factory Store. Enjoy exceptional brands at extraordinary savings of 25% – 65% everyday for shopping that’s always worth the trip.
The Zillion Stores at Georgia 400 and Route 20 near Cumming, GA
There are swarms of small, medium and large shopping malls in the area around Georgia’s Route 400 — which is always labeled US Route 19 on maps — near the intersection of GA’s Route 20.
If you can’t find a restaurant with your favorite type of food there, you deserve to go hungry. Be ready to drive around and have a couple of friends with you as lookouts, if you know what stores are on your list. They’re all there. Somewhere. Finding them is just part of the adventure known as “shopping.” It’s also known as “torture” to most men.
The Mall of Georgia
The Mall of Georgia is a big sucker. It’s so big — “How big is it?” — that you could probably make a decent living selling used cars to people who have given up on trying to locate the vehicles they drove to the mall and forgot where they parked.
You could drive around with a trailer loaded with a bunch of cars of different sizes and styles, a banker and a Notary, and sell cars to The Lost Ones — with a promise for them to mail you the registrations to the cars they gave up trying to find. Then, you could sell those too!
That way, you might have enough money to go shopping at one of the gajillion stores inside.
Down what used to be a little two-lane road along a hillside, there is now a mall almost as big as Georgia — smack dab (almost) between I-85 and I-985, south of Lake Lanier near Buford.
If you survive the walk from your car, you will be enthralled by the most stunning array of shops anywhere. Except, possibly, in larger malls.
Bring all the cash you want to spend as you browse the inventories of hundreds of places with items that you cannot live without. You might, however, want to keep you credit cards in your shoe. That will give you time to ask yourself if you have to have whatever it is that you have to have.
