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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TLWH - Day 14 - The Tail of the Dragon

Tuesday, July 7th

Today we left Hot Springs, North Carolina and continued down along the NC-TN border.  This brought us through the Smoky Mountains to the famous "Tail of the Dragon"

The day started out on some fun back country roads.  So often we stop for gas at small country stores like this.  They are usually interested to hear our story and we get to learn a bit about them.  It's also fun to use the old mechanical pumps again.

This couple had a story.  Their store had burned to the ground a few years earlier.  All they were able to save was their bible:

Shortly after we got to cut up into the forest for some even smaller roads and some fun slippery mud

This brought us into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  This is part of the Cascades and I learned that it is "Smoky" only because of the weather.  In some areas, it rains more than 80" per year and the warm weather combines to make the blue smoke which is the evaporation and humidity.

The park was beautiful and I coud see why this is the most visited park in the US.  We took the scenic loop and ran into our biggest obstacle yet: 

Just as Hank and I were discussing riding up on the side to get past this, I noticed a Ranger was close enough to hear what we were saying.  He was standing up on the embankment watching.  I asked if we could just push our bikes up along the side but he was unyielding... we stayed in traffic for almost 45 minutes trying to keep our bikes from overheating.  Eventually, we got up to the cause of all this:

That's a Black Bear.  It's clear that the bears and dear in the park have become very domesticated.  We latter past a dear resting by the side of the road just a few feet from the cars.  Not at all like the bear and dear we have seen earlier.  As we entered into a less traveled area of the park, we were treated to a fun dirt road and our own Black Bear cub.  It's a bit like thoses Big Foot videos you've seen but I think you'll agree that this is, in fact, a Black Bear cub!:

That dirt road eventually led us to the "Tail of the Dragon"  OK, maybe we're just a dirt bikers at heart, but this was just another windy section of pavement to us.  Maybe it would be different if we had the right bikes for this but we were going to have fun either way.

 

Our hotel for the night was Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort.  This is the place to stay if you are going to ride the dragon's tail.  It was pretty cool talking to the people there and checking out the bikes.  The "Tree of Shame and a Lot of Pain" sparked our imagine trying to imagine how some of that stuff got there.

We'll be leaving North Carolina on day 15 and heading directly west through Tennessee.  It's a long 250 mile day which will bring us to Lynchburg Tennessee.  

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