Pretty Place!

No really, that's the name of the place :)

Ok, technically it's an open air chapel called Symmes Chapel at Camp Greenville, but most folks would look at you funny if you called it that.

Originally, I was just going to ride up the Caesar's Head on the twistiest road nearby, but once at the top, decided to ride on for a bit. When I neared the NC/SC border, I split to the right and headed for Pretty Place. The view there is phenomenal, and while the trees in the valleys below aren't at peak, the trees along the route, following the ridge were getting awfully close.

All of this helped contribute to my decision to return to Tennessee this weekend to ride the rest of the Cherohala and the Dragon, along with a few local roads which my local tour guide 'Calabash' has offered to reveal. Mmm. Good bakery times ahead!

Home Again

I made it home in 3.5 hours...more to tell, but sleep now.

....adding info after time and sleep has occurred...

The alarm clock went off at 4:15 a.m., and I finally dragged up by about 4:35. I'd packed most of my stuff the night before, so my main job was to wake up and get dressed. I wanted to be on the road by 5 a.m., but instead, was just leaving my room by 5:03 a.m. Down to the bike garage I crept, slightly wincing at the noise made by the electric garage door raising to give me access to Clyde. Once inside, I loaded him up and rolled him quietly outside, shutting the door, before walking up to the main building to drop off the room and garage key.

I fired the bike up and rolled away quickly from the cabins, heading out onto Hwy 68 at 5:17 a.m. The next 20 or so miles are quite curvy and the trees cling to the edge of the shoulder. Lots of places for forest rats to lurk, and I kept fully in mind that my sight distance was my braking distance. Thankfully, no large animals appeared, and through the course of the morning, I only encountered one fox (running away from me) and one cat (crossing the road).

The temps dipped to their lowest when I got to Murphy, NC, just over an hour after I left (and still dark). In addition, this is where the fog started. It would come and go in spurts, but was heavy enough, I couldn't always tell when I was out of it, since my face shield would stay misted over from the condensation. All the way to just past Hiawassee, the speed stayed pretty conservative with the fog, but shortly after leaving Hiawasee, I started climbing in elevation and the fog lifted. Oh joy! The temps stayed in the low to mid 40's until around sunrise, and finally started to edge up. My heated grips and vest were given medium duty, and both performed admirably (once the controller on the vest stopped having fits).

Once again, Highway 76 heading south into Clayton was a beautiful sight to see, and with the fog gone and the sun finally starting to lighten the sky, that road was great! I made it to Clayton right at 7:15, and filled up, back on the road at 7:30. It was such a relief to ride those roads without the clogging traffic I'd dealt with on Friday, and the overall trip ended up being 30 minutes faster on the return.

So, I've come through dark, twisty, foggy, animal infested roads, and it wasn't until going through Clemson that a student talking on her cell phone decided to change lanes into my space as I was beside her. I love my air horn. She jerked and got the car back over, but never missed a beat on the stupid phone. Rer.

I rolled into my driveway at 8:47 a.m., exactly 3.5 hours after leaving, made a quick trip inside to unpack, change clothes, make a cuppa joe, grab a quick snack and head back out to church. Someone at work suggested I could have found a place closer to Tellico to attend, and yeah, I probably could have, in hindsight. However, I'd not done any prior 'vestigating, so I just headed back home. My Sunday afternoon nap was on the intense side :)

Chasing Calabash

Update to follow, but for now...good ride today, cool sights to see, both underground and on the mountain top.

and now for the goods...

The plan Saturday morning was to meet up at a gas station in town, and then head over to a bakery that Bill (aka Calabash) frequents. I highly recommend his bakery acumen...it was wonderful! However, at the bakery, a schism was forming, with one group wanting to just ride all over the countryside, and another group taking a more leisurely approach...visiting a local tourist spot, taking local country roads to another town for lunch, heading down to an orchard for famous fried pie, and then meeting back up in Tellico for supper (Ride to Eat, Eat to Ride).

It ended up being nearly a half and half split, and I actually stayed with the more local crew. The Karl Kontingent was heading back over into SC and then up to NC, riding on Highway 28, but I'd ridden that route three weeks earlier, and it seemed a little silly for me to ride 4 hours to get to Tennessee so I could meet up with folks and ride back over to SC, yaknow? Plus, Calabash knows the area we were going to ride, and if his choice of roads were as good as his choice of bakery, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed.

Heh heh. Good deduction :)

I'm sure we took what had to be the most circuitous route possible to get from Tellico Plains to 'The Lost Sea' near Sweetwater, TN, but it was probably the most fun route as well. I made myself Bill's shadow, and chased him across miles of curves, sweeps, hills, dales, and straights. It's really nice having a bike like Clyde that will stand up and say, 'yes ma'am!' when I twist the throttle. The riding I did Saturday would have felt like I was pushing right to the edge of the envelope on the Ninja, but on the VFR, I knew I had acres of envelope to spare!

The tour itself began after you walked down a long, yellow tunnel. Our tour guide had a few forays into humor land, and kept things interesting enough. There were cool rock formations and lights that had been placed to show off the area ended up having random plants grow up around them from spores and seeds carried in from visitors. There were writings on the walls dating back to the Civil War, and Indian artifacts found inside what was thought to be a council chamber. In one room, we got to experience utter deprivation of light, and about 99% of the folks in there fell sucker to a ruse involving the generation of static electricity together. We got to take boats out on the largest underground lake in the country and see a bit of a feeding frenzy when food was tossed to the fish they stock the lake with.

Once back topside, it was time to ride off to our lunch destination in Englewood. We got there about 15 minutes before they closed, and it overwhelmed their kitchen for a bit. The last two people in our party got their food about 45 minutes after we got there (and after half of us had finished eating). Two in the party had gone to look at an antique store before going to the restaurant, and when they finally stopped by, the doors were locked. We didn't realize until later that they were locked out, and the one who went looking didn't see them, so we had a disconnect until after lunch.


Once we left lunch and were heading to Mercer's Orchard, it was after 3 p.m. and an hour ride to get there. Once again, Calabash excelled at his road selection skills so that we took some exhilarating twisties on the way. We wound our way along some rivers and rock faces. When there was a long uphill stretch, and Bill started pulling away, I tagged right along behind with him. I figured my defense would be, "Well, officer, I didn't know where I was, so I had to make sure I didn't lose that bike up there..." True enough :)

We stopped for gas in Ducktown and decided to skip the fried pie run, since it was getting late, and no one was really hungry anyway. We were supposed to meet up with Karl's group by 5 for supper, and were going to be later than 5 if we went straight back, so we started heading that way, finally making it in to Tellico Plains around 5:20 p.m.

None of the other folks were there yet (sooprise, sooprise!), so we milled about for a bit, and then decided to eat, since the kitchen could handle shifts better than a mob of folks. We ate (I had a huge meal), and by 6:30, we figured the other group was probably waiting for us up on the Cherohala Skyway somewhere, since that was the destination we were going to head for after supper as a group. The five of us who were still riding at this point headed up the Cherohala a little before 7 p.m., and made it to the first large pullout facing west around 7:15 or 7:20, just before the sun started to dip below the horizon.

We (Bill, Ty, Clay, Rick and I) stayed up there, watching the sun sink completely, washing the sky in a pink flood before the blue clouds overpowered the afterglow. For the ride back down, four of us followed in the blazing wake of Ty, who has what he affectionately calls 'barn burners' on his bike. As we rode under the tree canopy, there was a tunnel of light extending forward from his bike that was borderline ridiculous! I didn't really even need my headlight...his array was enough for all of us to thread needles and do cross stitch. I feel sorry for any oncoming traffic that was momentarily blinded while he deactivated the reactors needed to fire those babies up. I wonder if I could get some for my bike...

At any rate, we ended up back at the Lodge around 8:30 or so, where the Karl Kontingent had just shown back up and started to have supper. It turns out they had pulled off at an overlook further up on the Cherohala, and then passed us on their way down while we were still admiring the sunset. After supper, the bulk of the folks were heading back over to the campsite where the rest of the rally folks were, but I decided to call it a night, since I was planning to get up in the wee sma' hours Sunday morning
.

Three for Three

Tonight I'm in Tellico Plains, TN, winding out the third of the three annual rallies organized by folks at BeginnerBikers.org. A lot of the folks took the whole day off and got here by early morning, but some of us have wrung nearly every morsel of vacation time out of the work rag, and I only managed to get a half day off.

However, the weather has been ultimado perfecto! Sunny and low 80s were as hot as it got, and the further up into the mountains I rode, the cooler it got. By the time I pulled in at the Lodge this evening at 5:00 on the nose, it was 60 degrees outside.

There was some typical Friday afternoon traffic to deal with (trucks hauling camper trailers and the occasional motor home), and I managed to ride through Hiwassee, GA, right when school was letting out, when cops were holding up traffic on the main highway. Overall, it was a good ride, and the last 30 or so miles were quite zippy :)

Once at the Lodge, one of the regulars from the forum (Bill, aka Calabash) saw me checking in and invited me out to the patio. I sat out there and we talked until a couple of the rider's wives, Anna and Brandi, showed up, and then another couple (Stephen and Jan), and another rider (Rick), until it was just a big ol' chat fest out there. Gradually, some of the other riders came back from an afternoon jaunt (Tyson, Larry, Clay, Mike & Angie, and James & Deanna), and eventually, everyone had something to eat, although it was done in about four shifts.

There was also a jar of moonshine passed around, which I got to sample. You don't want to have your eyes open too wide when you drink it, because the fumes burn, but it actually tastes pretty good (as far as whisky is concerned). Right after I tried a sip, and pronounced it good, Angie (hostess up at the Dayton Bug Bash rally) tried some, and, um, didn't like it so much :) Good job, Brewmaster Ty!

Tomorrow, folks are going to meet up at a gas station around 10 a.m. and then head to a bakery for breakfast. I'm thinking I might get up a tad earlier and do some riding before the official gather time. There are too many good roads up here!