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 b
e 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
.
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