I've been looking at the stops in north carolina actually, and if I rented a car at gastonia, the drive from there is only 190 miles. According to mapquest, its 236 miles from atlanta. Is there anything bad about this route?
I did a quick check and it looks like you could walk less than a mile to the
Knights Inn in Gastonia and spend the night there. Then walk less than a mile further down to the
Enterprise car rental location the following day. But are you sure you're up to this? Forgive me for saying so, but I'm not really getting the resourceful self-reliant vibe from your posts. This is also the kind of route where you'd want to be sure everything is going to be open and ready for you when you think it is. Don't just rely on mapquest or google maps or whatever, be sure to verify everything is up-to-date and make sure you have a Plan B
and C for when things go wrong. Flying to Atlanta and renting a car is almost foolproof simply because there are so many options to consider if anything goes haywire. On the other hand, taking a train to a tiny town's unstaffed flag stop in the middle of the night requires a bit more planning to make sure everything goes smoothly. This isn't the 1970's and hippies no longer get a free ride from freight trains and stationwagons.
Map Link...