Ride Report:
My trip got cut short because a weather front came through and significantly dropped the temperatures and brought with it a bunch of rain and snow. I ended up spending two days riding down, 2 days riding around the Smokies and then 2 days riding home. I tried to ride every road suggested and did almost that. I also did endless scouring the net for other peoples recommendations on the best roads to and from and I managed to put together a pretty good route. I was also able to plot my entire route in Google Maps and then transfer those routes to my Garmin Nuvi 550 and it worked pretty well with only a few glitches here and there. There;s some pretty good threads over on ADV on how to do it if you are interested.
I went down through the Smokies a few years ago but was just passing through, so I didn't get to really ride on many different roads. This time, the trip was all about packing as many twisty roads in one trip as possible. This was a tall task to do in such a short time - it meant that basically each day I was riding from sunrise to sunset with only a 20minute break for lunch in the middle of the day. This was fine for me, because I usually prefer to ride in 4 hour blocks anyways, so I was trying to time my breaks for whenever I needed to fill up. Most days I ended up on the bike for 10 hours or a little bit more. If this was during the summer, it would have been so much better with the extra daylight.
Day 1:
I rode down with another rider (on a VFR) and we rode slab the whole way down to Tazewell, Virginia. We left Ontario late, and took a bit too long getting down there, so we had to ride VA#16 "The Back of the Dragon" while it was getting dark. By the time we arrived at Hungry Mother State Park, it was completely dark out, we were a bit disoriented and we couldn't figure out where the office was or how to go about selecting a camp site. We rode around the area and saw a really nice looking site and decided to set up our tents on it. There were many sites available. After our tents were set up and we were just eating our dinner and so forth, a bunch of pick-up trucks pulling trailers come into the camping area - a group of Boy Scouts from North Carolina. They go about setting up their tents and it turns out we had taken one of their allocated camp sites. They had reserved 8 sites but only arrived around 9pm, which is why it looked so empty there when we arrived at 8:30. They call the parks people who said we had to get out and that the park was totally full and we would have to stay elsewhere. I said we would be happy to and that we only set up there because it was dark out and we were disoriented. I asked them if they knew a place we could go that was nearby, because from a safety standpoint we didn't want to be riding for long at night on twisty roads, when all of a sudden one of the Boy Scouts leaders says not to worry about it, they will let us stay where we are as long as we just give him $20 for it (even though it cost them $25/site). That was very nice of him and they just crammed the kids in a little tighter for that night, knowing that we would be gone in the morning and they would have the use of the space. It was a really nice park, with awesome campsites, clean facilities and electrical outlets in the bathrooms. I also liked that they had wood decks as tent platforms because the area was so hilly. It was nice to sleep on a perfectly level surface and way more that I had hoped for. I had brought my stove and food for meals, but it turned out that my fuel bottle lid had broken and I can't get it off the bottle. So I had a bottle full of fuel, a perfectly good stove and all this food, but no way to cook any of it. It was a good thing I still had 1/2 a sub from lunch at Subway... a sign of many more meals to come.
The campsite at Hungry Mother State Park:
Day 2 Route
We woke up the next day and set off shortly after sunrise. I'm an early riser and was up by 6am and had my tent and all gear totally packed and ready to go before light, but for some reason we still left late. From here on out, we were going to avoid any more slab - only backroads and twisties. There was a decent amount of fog in the morning - I like riding in the fog.
We rode this route together and he was going to turn around and make his way home because he didn't have time off work. I was going to continue to the Iron Horse Motorcycle Lodge in the Smokies and he would leave around lunch time. We rode together until Little Switzerland aka NC226a (or "The Diamond Back"). This route leaving Hungry Mother and over to Little Switzerland was really nice and was getting better with each road we took. The NC226a took me by surprise and I really liked it. It was an amazing piece of road. There were lots of twists and turns and beautiful scenery all of the place.
We split and then I headed up the Hwy 80 "The Devils Whip". I had forgotten I put this road in my route and it was more mountain climbing twisty awesomeness. From here I snaked my way over to the Iron Horse Lodge. I was supposed to ride the NC 197, but my GPS was acting up and so I ended up missing it entirely. It's a shame, because I had read that there is a twisty 5 mile gravel ascent up a mountain which I really wanted to ride in addition to the other 60 miles of paved fun.
The Iron Horse Lodge was a really great place to set up for the time there. Camping was only $15/night. The staff were really nice and the tent sites were perfect - set up along a nice creek which was nice to listen to each night falling asleep. On the Saturday night, there was a BMW thing going on there, so it was pretty full, but by Sunday night the place was almost a ghost town with only a handful of riders.
The camp sites:
Covered parking for the bikes which is nice in the mornings to get on a bike that is not soaked with dew. Once the BMW's left - it was all big touring bikes, all the time. They all seemed to like the V-Strom.
Day 3 - Route
I ditched all my heavy gear and now only took with me a mostly empty top box and a map bag. This way I was able to test out my new Anakee 3's a little better than being loaded down with all my gear. Suffice to say, they are awesome tires. The best of my day 3 roads were Moonshiner #28, Cherohala Skyway, US129, River Road, GA #60/180 and Wayah Rd.
A view from #28:
After riding on thousands of miles of twisty roads, I can still say that the Cherohala Skyway remains my all time favourite. The endless curves mixed in with so much amazing scenery keep it at the top of my list. If the Blue Ridge Parkway had a 55mph speed limit on it, then the southern section of it would come in a close second. A view from the Cherohala - the mass of white in the picture is clouds and I wasn't quite finished my ascent on this particular stretch.
I took River Road which runs south off the Cherohala Skyway, very close to Telico Plains. It will take you past Bald River Falls which is quite nice. By accident, I also took the North River road, which is easy twisty gravel loop. The only thing was that my tires were inflated pretty high to compensate for all my gear and I didn't bother to let some pressure out of them, so had to take it a bit easy. You can link it with a few other roads and get yourself down to Murphy, which was a route recommended to me by a member here. Thanks! it was really awesome and I'm very glad to have taken it.
A view of the river along River Road:
A view of Bald River Falls:
A nice spot along the North River Road:
Getting high up on another stretch of twisty dirt road. I think I missed peak fall colours by about a week:
My trip got cut short because a weather front came through and significantly dropped the temperatures and brought with it a bunch of rain and snow. I ended up spending two days riding down, 2 days riding around the Smokies and then 2 days riding home. I tried to ride every road suggested and did almost that. I also did endless scouring the net for other peoples recommendations on the best roads to and from and I managed to put together a pretty good route. I was also able to plot my entire route in Google Maps and then transfer those routes to my Garmin Nuvi 550 and it worked pretty well with only a few glitches here and there. There;s some pretty good threads over on ADV on how to do it if you are interested.
I went down through the Smokies a few years ago but was just passing through, so I didn't get to really ride on many different roads. This time, the trip was all about packing as many twisty roads in one trip as possible. This was a tall task to do in such a short time - it meant that basically each day I was riding from sunrise to sunset with only a 20minute break for lunch in the middle of the day. This was fine for me, because I usually prefer to ride in 4 hour blocks anyways, so I was trying to time my breaks for whenever I needed to fill up. Most days I ended up on the bike for 10 hours or a little bit more. If this was during the summer, it would have been so much better with the extra daylight.
Day 1:
I rode down with another rider (on a VFR) and we rode slab the whole way down to Tazewell, Virginia. We left Ontario late, and took a bit too long getting down there, so we had to ride VA#16 "The Back of the Dragon" while it was getting dark. By the time we arrived at Hungry Mother State Park, it was completely dark out, we were a bit disoriented and we couldn't figure out where the office was or how to go about selecting a camp site. We rode around the area and saw a really nice looking site and decided to set up our tents on it. There were many sites available. After our tents were set up and we were just eating our dinner and so forth, a bunch of pick-up trucks pulling trailers come into the camping area - a group of Boy Scouts from North Carolina. They go about setting up their tents and it turns out we had taken one of their allocated camp sites. They had reserved 8 sites but only arrived around 9pm, which is why it looked so empty there when we arrived at 8:30. They call the parks people who said we had to get out and that the park was totally full and we would have to stay elsewhere. I said we would be happy to and that we only set up there because it was dark out and we were disoriented. I asked them if they knew a place we could go that was nearby, because from a safety standpoint we didn't want to be riding for long at night on twisty roads, when all of a sudden one of the Boy Scouts leaders says not to worry about it, they will let us stay where we are as long as we just give him $20 for it (even though it cost them $25/site). That was very nice of him and they just crammed the kids in a little tighter for that night, knowing that we would be gone in the morning and they would have the use of the space. It was a really nice park, with awesome campsites, clean facilities and electrical outlets in the bathrooms. I also liked that they had wood decks as tent platforms because the area was so hilly. It was nice to sleep on a perfectly level surface and way more that I had hoped for. I had brought my stove and food for meals, but it turned out that my fuel bottle lid had broken and I can't get it off the bottle. So I had a bottle full of fuel, a perfectly good stove and all this food, but no way to cook any of it. It was a good thing I still had 1/2 a sub from lunch at Subway... a sign of many more meals to come.
The campsite at Hungry Mother State Park:
Day 2 Route
We woke up the next day and set off shortly after sunrise. I'm an early riser and was up by 6am and had my tent and all gear totally packed and ready to go before light, but for some reason we still left late. From here on out, we were going to avoid any more slab - only backroads and twisties. There was a decent amount of fog in the morning - I like riding in the fog.
We rode this route together and he was going to turn around and make his way home because he didn't have time off work. I was going to continue to the Iron Horse Motorcycle Lodge in the Smokies and he would leave around lunch time. We rode together until Little Switzerland aka NC226a (or "The Diamond Back"). This route leaving Hungry Mother and over to Little Switzerland was really nice and was getting better with each road we took. The NC226a took me by surprise and I really liked it. It was an amazing piece of road. There were lots of twists and turns and beautiful scenery all of the place.
We split and then I headed up the Hwy 80 "The Devils Whip". I had forgotten I put this road in my route and it was more mountain climbing twisty awesomeness. From here I snaked my way over to the Iron Horse Lodge. I was supposed to ride the NC 197, but my GPS was acting up and so I ended up missing it entirely. It's a shame, because I had read that there is a twisty 5 mile gravel ascent up a mountain which I really wanted to ride in addition to the other 60 miles of paved fun.
The Iron Horse Lodge was a really great place to set up for the time there. Camping was only $15/night. The staff were really nice and the tent sites were perfect - set up along a nice creek which was nice to listen to each night falling asleep. On the Saturday night, there was a BMW thing going on there, so it was pretty full, but by Sunday night the place was almost a ghost town with only a handful of riders.
The camp sites:
Covered parking for the bikes which is nice in the mornings to get on a bike that is not soaked with dew. Once the BMW's left - it was all big touring bikes, all the time. They all seemed to like the V-Strom.
Day 3 - Route
I ditched all my heavy gear and now only took with me a mostly empty top box and a map bag. This way I was able to test out my new Anakee 3's a little better than being loaded down with all my gear. Suffice to say, they are awesome tires. The best of my day 3 roads were Moonshiner #28, Cherohala Skyway, US129, River Road, GA #60/180 and Wayah Rd.
A view from #28:
After riding on thousands of miles of twisty roads, I can still say that the Cherohala Skyway remains my all time favourite. The endless curves mixed in with so much amazing scenery keep it at the top of my list. If the Blue Ridge Parkway had a 55mph speed limit on it, then the southern section of it would come in a close second. A view from the Cherohala - the mass of white in the picture is clouds and I wasn't quite finished my ascent on this particular stretch.
I took River Road which runs south off the Cherohala Skyway, very close to Telico Plains. It will take you past Bald River Falls which is quite nice. By accident, I also took the North River road, which is easy twisty gravel loop. The only thing was that my tires were inflated pretty high to compensate for all my gear and I didn't bother to let some pressure out of them, so had to take it a bit easy. You can link it with a few other roads and get yourself down to Murphy, which was a route recommended to me by a member here. Thanks! it was really awesome and I'm very glad to have taken it.
A view of the river along River Road:
A view of Bald River Falls:
A nice spot along the North River Road:
Getting high up on another stretch of twisty dirt road. I think I missed peak fall colours by about a week:
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Heated gear makes a huge difference - I wasn't even chilled yesterday even in the rain clipping at 130 on the 401 - polar fleece long johns, heated jacket liner, leathers over that, rain gear over that, Gerbings heated waterproof gloves. 
