Leaving Columbus, we will ride south through Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. The hills of West Virginia and Kentucky are exceptional riding. Going further south into North Carolina we will enter the Great Smoky Mountains where we will encounter the Blue Ridge Parkway. We will ride the parkway south to its southern terminus at Cherokee, North Carolina. The parkway is really a great motorcycle road, however, it is a federally supervised, speed restricted road which may be a burden as we will want to move along. Like CA 1 along the California coast, the Blue Ridge Parkway can be a test of high density tourist traffic endurance during August, but, this isn't supposed to be easy!
Riding through Cherokee, North Carolina we go deeper into the Smoky Mountains where we will encounter generally great riding and an over the top motorcycle road called the “Tail of the Dragon”. Three hundred and eighteen curves in eleven miles. Hang on to your hat! Also, don't expect to see many highway signs indicating the route you are riding. This road is so infamous, that the road signs are removed by cyclists for souvenirs. The state abandoned replacing them long ago.
Departing the Smoky Mountains, we will go into Tennessee and on west through to Franklin a suburb of Nashville, and Bumpus Harley-Davidson, our eleventh check point.
No comments:
Post a Comment