TLWY - Day 15 - Leaving the Appalachians
 Wednesday, June 8th

Today we left Deals Gap and took one more short loop through North Carolina before entering again into Tennessee.  We've been traveling in the Appalachians since we started in Maine.  Today we started the descent into the rolling hills of central Tennessee.  Our goal for the night was Lynchburg, Tennessee.    

One last photo of the Smoky Mountains:

Tennessee farms are beautiful and very green

One of many river crossings:

We passed this motorcycle "repair" shop, but I told them I'd be scared to leave my bike with them for fear it would never make it back out.

You may remember that we saw three sets of tracks on day 13.   Two were from Greg and John who are riding for Easter Seals.  The third we caught up with today.  Ameen started the TAT in Virginia and he was later joined by Ramine.  They are both camping off of their bikes so they are pretty loaded up.  Ramine is a new rider and I think he has less than 500 miles experience.  Way to go guys - I'm impressed by the camp off the bike mentality, but we have a schedule to keep!

We also met this group of four riders riding west to east.  They started in Tennessee and are headed out to the North Carolina coast

I've mentioned this before, but it still amazes me that we have not run into another rider, on these dirt roads and trails, that is not riding the TAT.

The car of the day is near and dear to Hank.  He was despondent thinking that another FJ40 was left for dead.

As it turns out, this FJ40 is not destined to be junk.  We were happy to find out that this father and his two boys are going to get this one running again.  They came out to greet us and discuss FJ40 restoration.  What a great family, we hope they get that one running!

Tennessee is definitely in the middle of the bible belt.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that there are at least 10 times as many churches as gas stations.  This sign just caught my attention: There are three Baptist churches in a 1.6-mile stretch of this road and that's just the Baptist Churches!  

We were glad that a lot of today was on pavement!  Even with that advantage, we pulled into Lynchburg at 6 pm.  Lynchburg is the home of Jack Daniels Whiskey.  My wife and I were in Tennessee just about a year ago and we toured the Jack Daniels Distillery.  I have to say that's it worth the extra few hours if you're planning a trip/ride through here.

Dinner was at the Barrell Room BBQ.  They liked our story and let us put it on their wall (their walls were covered with customers comments/stories).

Day 16 is a 200 mile day all in Tennessee.  We'll end up in Pickwick Landing, Tennessee.

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Where are they now?