Popular Cowboy event returns to Cartersville, Georgia, in March

The road to the American West goes through Atlanta, at least it does for a few days each March. The 14th annual Southeastern Cowboy Gathering is set for March 9 - 11 in Cartersville, Georgia. Cartersville is about an hour northwest of Atlanta along Interstate 75.

Cartersville is also home to a Sleep Inn & MainStay Suites hotel owned and operated by Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores. If you're headed to the Southeastern Cowboy Gathering, click here to book a room at the Sleep Inn or click here to book a room at the MainStay Suites. Our location in northwest Georgia has truck parking available at our Love's next door, and the hotel offers a complimentary hot breakfast each morning, indoor pool, fitness center and free Wi-Fi.

Plus, we're pet friendly! Check out reviews for our Sleep Inn location and reviews for MainStay Suites.

More about this upcoming event:

The Southeastern Cowboy Gathering is hosted by the Booth Western Art Museum, a 120,000-square-foot museum located in Cartersville. It opened in 2003 and has the largest space for Western art in the country. The fun and educational three-day festival celebrates the American West. It showcases art activities, concerts, children's activities and the Southeastern Chuck Wagon Invitational.

According to the Booth Museum, the chuck wagon event is the largest east of the Mississippi. What is a chuck wagon? It's a wagon that carries supplies and has equipment for cooking, similar to a modern food truck. Teams of cooks will be provided ingredients and instructed to cook a lunch of beef stew, mashed potatoes and more! They'll also provide a history lesson as to the importance of chuck wagons in the 19th century.

The entire event is a history lesson, but it's also filled with entertainment. Click here for a list of activities at the Southeastern Cowboy Gathering.

Sculptor Chris Navarro will be there. He is the event's featured artist.

Western singer-songwriter and actor R.W. Hampton will be at the Southeastern Cowboy Gathering this year, too. He recorded 16 albums and appeared in more than a dozen movies.

Also attending this year's Southeastern Cowboy Gathering is "America's Western Sweetheart," Belinda Gail. Gail is a nationally recognized Western singer, the winner of the 2014 Western Music Association's award for Western Album of the Year ("Granite Mountain").

The Southeastern Cowboy Gathering is a celebration of Western heritage, and if it happens to be in your travel plans, we hope you'll stay at one of our hotels. We're less than 5 miles from the museum, and we offer the same highway hospitality our Customers receive day in and day out at more than 420 Love's locations across the country.

Cowboy photo credit: Roderick Eime

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