Wednesday – Deals Gap, North Carolina
Wow, the dragon is good! 🙂
Well, it poured with rain during the night and the damm tent leaks, so it is staying when I leave. I had a quick look at the Tree of Shame before breakfast. This tree started about 20 years ago and is the result of a lot of prangs and bits of peoples cars and bikes ended up here. There has been a lot of prangs on this road over the years.
Then I said good bye to the guys who I had a beer with last night, Brian, Nathan and Frank, unfortunately no photo of Brian, but his bike is there, it is the black Harley, check out the Goldwing of Franks, it has been converted to a trike, and has a trailer and a sidecar, which normally carries a dog, but this trip an esky full of beer, my kind of bloke 🙂 Nearly as many wheels as a semi!
I also said goodbye to Chris and Ray, both from Florida, I do not think they are a couple, despite the photo 🙂
This was when I had another read of this sign on the tree near to where I was camped, scary!
Then it was off for a look at the fabled Dragons Tail, this is a bit of road that winds around the Smokey Mountain and is only 11 miles long, or 18km but it has 318 curves in it, wow, and if you look at my TomTom GPS, you can believe it too. I have also included the Google map of the road.
Not much time for photos on the first run, but imagine a lot of these, back to back 🙂
I made it to the bottom without any problems, but I was not pushing it either yet.
So, off I go back up the range where the look-out is over the Fontana Dam.
Then back near the resort is the state line where I managed to get an addition for the collection. Check out all th esigns you have to read within about 30 feet, lol.
By now it was lunch time, so I had a nice hot dog and chips, real chips this time, not potato chips 🙂 All the stuff on the ceiling are T-shirts with signatures of people who stripped off I guess 🙂 Well, more like an old shirt and they bought new ones with dragon emblems on them from the shop and left theirs behind.
It was a popular place with lots of bikers of all styles.
After lunch it was more of the same, not! In fact I managed to do quite a few runs this afternoon, with and without photos and I also modified the setup of my Garmin and took a track every second, so it looks like this.
Which at speed sort of looks like this, if you are not into motorcycles, get a life, this is what it is all about 🙂
There were a number of professional photographers who clicked away merrily at anything that went past, hoping you will visit the websites and buy some action photos.
As there is no internet here, very hard to find out at this time what was taken. There were a lot of bikes on the road and occasional trucks and trailers, as well as Z cars which are sport type cars, there was a convention of about 200 of these in the area, all doing the tail.
I then managed to get a crappy photo of the other state sign, it was in a more difficult location.
It was about 4.30pm and I decided to ride to Fontana Village and get some beer, they did not sell take away beer at the resort, but they gave you free ice. The power station on the river looked good with all the mist rising above the water.
I was waved at as I went past the servo and when I went back, there were a couple more Stroms. I met and had a chat and a beer for a while with Jeff and his son Brad, both riding stroms, Jeff has a black one and Brad a blue one, I like the blue colour, my first strom was that colour 🙂
I had a quick look at my rear tyre and I must say the ME880 handled the tail real well, although I did not push it too hard, it stuck like glue, only a small amount of chicken strip to get rid of.
So, I stocked up with some beer and headed back to the resort where I got changed and added some ice to the beer.
This is the state of affairs with my tent, you can see how much water is in it.
Now, Brian from this morning had left his brand new tent behind, he told me it leaked as well, but if I wanted to I could sleep in the middle as it was only the edges. I had thought about it and decided to upgrade from a 2 man low style leaking boat to a 3 man high style leaking boat!
There was more room inside, so I would find out how bad it was later on I guess. During this time another group of riders came and set up tents and we had a chat a bit later with a few beers, before migrating to the fire pit. That is Wayne, Rex, Shirly and Rajah.
That lasted for a while before they crashed out, but as I still had some beer left I continued drinking and chatting with Tank and the other Ohio riders, plus a few from elsewhere. That is moonshine I am drinking out of a jar!
It was a late night, but very enjoyable, what a shame it started to rain again.
Day – 124 miles and 200 km
Trip – 11,394 miles and 18,337 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
States I have ridden in.
TravellingStrom 