I just returned from a 3-day trip to Tennessee and North Carolina. Three days of riding almost 800 miles on the best roads I have ever found to challenge your riding skills. I've been riding for over 40 years off and on, but mainly for the past 15 religiously. I fancy myself as a very good rider, not great because I've got improvements that can be made, especially left tight curves. This article will highlight our rides these past three days and some hints to help you decide if you have the skills needed to survive on some of these routes. Yes, I did say survive since may have died thinking they had the skills to conquer the beasts known as; Tail of The Dragon, The Snake, The Rattler, Moonshine 28, Hellbender, Devil's Triangle, Cherohala Skyway, Joyce Kilmer Forest, The Great Smoky Mountains National Forest, Little River Road and The Foothills Parkway, Diamondback, The Gauntlet, Reapers Ride, Copperhead, The Sidewinder and Devil's Whip just to name a few. Though I have yet to ride all of these, I have had lots of skill development time on some of the more popular ones. The areas within this article highlighted will lead you to links explaining more about that particular area.
Day 1 took us out of Gatlinburg west on TN 441 to Little River Road into Townsend and then The Foothills Parkway south to US 129 "The Dragon". The Dragon is a 318 curved road that travels 11 miles that is best traveled during the work week, however today found us riding it mid morning on a Saturday! We saw many, many sport bikes and car clubs testing their skills. Car clubs we saw included Corvettes, Mustangs and Mini Coppers Clubs along with a few Polaris Slingshots. As we got down to Deals Gap for a well deserved cup of coffee and breakfast, I found myself saying, "that was the most challenging ride I've ever had on The Tail!" Not that the others haven't been, but a friend with the initials CG, yes Chad that's you, has always taken us on the road during less populated times! After leaving The Dragon, we continued south on 28, known as Moonshine 28 for the Moonshiners that used this roadway, dirt and gravel back in the day to move their moonshine recipes from town to town. Then 19 into Cherokee and Maggie Valley, NC. In Maggie Valley we finally made it to Wheels Through Time (WTT) owned by Dale Walksler. Being born and raised in Wisconsin, I hate to admit, this was a nicer museum than The Harley-Davidson one in Milwaukee. Reason being, you could actually touch Dale's collection on the most part. Most of his motorcycles were displayed just as he had found them. One of the more unique motorcycles was an XA Harley built by Harley-Davidson to be used in the African War. Harley-Davidson wanted a motorcycle that would not overheat in the extreme temperatures of Africa, their current model the WLA V-twin had a history of rear cylinders overheating. Another problem was the location of the air box (air filter), thus getting plugged up with sand from dessert riding and finally excessive maintenance of the chain/belt drive of the WLA. With the success of the BMW opposed twin, Harley-Davidson developed the XA or eXperimental Army engine. The air filter was located between the opposed twin, thus hidden and no longer was the drive train one of chain or belt, but now shaft driven! By the time HD completed production of some 1,000 XA models, the war in Africa was coming to an end and the XA was never used during this conflict and units were later sold off as surplus!! I would love to say I've got one to sell, but this just isn't the case! WTT has 38,000 square feet of display space and uses every bit of it! Cost to get into WTT is $15 and they offer free bottled water, how awesome is that! Leaving WTT we headed north on NC 209 commonly referred to as The Rattler. I disagree that The Rattler is better, more challenging than The Dragon as their website indicates. It WILL test your skills, but since it is less traveled than The Dragon, you will find yourself less stressed, and more time to ride it. None-the-less, a must ride! Once is Hot Springs, NC we rode west on NC 25 into Newport than south on 321 back to Gatlinburg and our hotel Parkview Inn (aka Flea Bag). Day 1 ended with 250 miles.
Day 2 was going to be a long day, so we started riding at 7:00am. Today would consist of a ride to Devil's Triangle and to find out first hand how challenging The Devil would be. A Facebook friend sent me a message the night before saying that the 10mph switchbacks on Devil's Triangle meant just that! Advised me NOT to attempt any faster than that, thanks RS, yep that's you Renee! Once on The Devil, we saw very little if any traffic, however there were lots of wet leaves, especially in the curves making speeds much slower than we would have liked to go. For those of you who know what the Fog Line is (typically a white strip paints on the right side of your lane to help in fogging conditions showing were the side is), well some of The Devil's fog lines had be washed away with erosion, and had crumbled off the mountain! Thus, the width of the road was even narrower! My FB friend was spot on with 10mph switchbacks translate to 10 MPH SWITCHBACKS!! Devil's Triangle is initiated usually in Oliver Springs, TN on TN 62 west to TN 116 into Petros, TN. Riders follow TN 116 for about 44 miles and find themselves back in Oliver Springs on TN 330. At speeds of 10-15mph this ride took us a few hours to complete. On a scale of 1-10, considering challenging, skills needed, weather/road conditions, I would rate it a 9 as far as difficulty! I asked myself if I would ride it again, possibly.....NO railing to keep you on course! This is similar to most of these highly skilled roads in TN and NC, nothing to keep you on the road but your SKILL!!
Next stop was Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville for some BBQ at The Shed!! On Sundays, neither opens until noon and we arrived around 11:30 so we watched a Riding Academy Class that was in progress. In talking to their RiderCoach they have been doing the new curriculum and skills evaluation since 2015 in TN. Here I thought WI was on the cutting edge and we were the very 1st State to Model the New Curriculum for MSF. After another wonderful BBQ lunch courtesy of The Shed we rode TN 411 to Vonore, TN then TN 360. TN 360 takes you on some winding roads that were very scenic and not nearly the challenge of others we've ridden. TN 360 also is very picturesque as it winds its' way around Tellico Lake. One of the gals in motorclothes at Smoky Mountain HD told us about TN 360 and also Bald River Falls. Ride Cherohala Skyway east from Tellico Plains about 5 miles east of Cherohala Harley-Davidson to Forest Service Road 210. Once on Forest Service Road you will ride about 7 miles on a narrow 2-lane road back to the falls. It might be a 14 mile roundtrip, but highly worth every minute it took to get there! The husband of the motorclothes gal at Cherohala HD told us about a shortcut after leaving the falls, it is a side road that few ever ride and it will take you back onto Cherohala Skyway quicker. We took his advice and found ourselves as the only ones on this "shortcut" that saved us about 5 miles.
Once on The Cherohala Skyway, MS (yes that's you Marc) led the way through elevations reaching 5,400 feet and commonly referred to as the $100 billion Skyway! As we were climbing temperatures dropped and it became very foggy, which is common. Instead of heading east to Robbinsville we took a shortcut to get to US 129 by riding The Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. This 3,800 acre forest was set aside in 1936 as a memorial to Joyce Kilmer who wrote the poem "Trees" as was killed in action in France during World War I. This stretch of roadway is bumpy and narrow but again worthy of the ride. Several of the forest's trees are 400+ years old! Once on US 129 we rode to Deals Gap had lunch and then rode The Dragon north to Foothills Parkway, Townsend and this time TN 321 into Pigeon Forge back to Gatlinburg. Todays riding totaled approximately 340 miles. Once back at the hotel, we celebrated with some well deserved liquid refreshments and some Monte Cristo Habanos from Cuba purchased from an earlier vacation in San Jose del Cabo.
Day 3 started off with temperatures in the low 40's and rain! We had debated about coming home a day early if it was going to rain all day. We decided to stay and didn't start riding until almost 11:00am, but sure glad we waited! Later in the day the clouds disappeared, temperatures reached the low 60's and roads were as dry as could be! Our route was a simple one, Little River Road, Foothills Parkway and The Dragon for lunch, then return the same direction. All routes were fairly clear of traffic EXCEPT the Little River Road which saw speeds as slow as 20mph, which is no fun on a motorcycle that could take the path-of-travel so much faster (smiling face)! The day still saw around 140 miles and our motorcycling adventure totaled just under 800 miles. When we got back we loaded the bikes on the trailer and got our gear packed before heading downtown Gatlinburg for the 4th and final time. This was the only time we didn't stop at Ole Smoky Distillery for yet another $5 sampling of the 14 or more moonshine recipes.
Overall experience this trip, keep those rpm's up to over 3500 and you will have immediate throttle roll-on when needed in the tight curves. I found myself mostly in 2nd gear on The Dragon with rpm's reaching in excess of 4000!! Instant power when you need it the most, I found the 2014 HD FLHTK Limited with the stock 103 High Output motor handled the challenge just fine, add that to the linked Brembo Brakes and you have part of what it takes to handle the many twisties of Tennessee and North Carolina! Of course you will also need the Skills to do it safely and lots of luck some idiot doesn't decide to cross into your lane of traffic because he thought he HAD the skill to share this road with you! Thankful this only happened once and the expression on his face was as if he does it all the time, which believe me, I'm sure he does.....idiot!! Don't EVER assume that because someone is riding a motorcycle that they POSSESS the SKILLS to be safe!! Ride your ride, keep improving on your SKILLS! Strive to be a SAFER, SMARTER, SKILLED Rider all the time!!
The above photo was something MS found the towel I used to wash me face before heading home on Tuesday morning at 3:00am!! This flea bag hotel I would not recommend to anyone, but on a positive note they had plenty of hot water!!
Day 3 started off with temperatures in the low 40's and rain! We had debated about coming home a day early if it was going to rain all day. We decided to stay and didn't start riding until almost 11:00am, but sure glad we waited! Later in the day the clouds disappeared, temperatures reached the low 60's and roads were as dry as could be! Our route was a simple one, Little River Road, Foothills Parkway and The Dragon for lunch, then return the same direction. All routes were fairly clear of traffic EXCEPT the Little River Road which saw speeds as slow as 20mph, which is no fun on a motorcycle that could take the path-of-travel so much faster (smiling face)! The day still saw around 140 miles and our motorcycling adventure totaled just under 800 miles. When we got back we loaded the bikes on the trailer and got our gear packed before heading downtown Gatlinburg for the 4th and final time. This was the only time we didn't stop at Ole Smoky Distillery for yet another $5 sampling of the 14 or more moonshine recipes.
Overall experience this trip, keep those rpm's up to over 3500 and you will have immediate throttle roll-on when needed in the tight curves. I found myself mostly in 2nd gear on The Dragon with rpm's reaching in excess of 4000!! Instant power when you need it the most, I found the 2014 HD FLHTK Limited with the stock 103 High Output motor handled the challenge just fine, add that to the linked Brembo Brakes and you have part of what it takes to handle the many twisties of Tennessee and North Carolina! Of course you will also need the Skills to do it safely and lots of luck some idiot doesn't decide to cross into your lane of traffic because he thought he HAD the skill to share this road with you! Thankful this only happened once and the expression on his face was as if he does it all the time, which believe me, I'm sure he does.....idiot!! Don't EVER assume that because someone is riding a motorcycle that they POSSESS the SKILLS to be safe!! Ride your ride, keep improving on your SKILLS! Strive to be a SAFER, SMARTER, SKILLED Rider all the time!!
The above photo was something MS found the towel I used to wash me face before heading home on Tuesday morning at 3:00am!! This flea bag hotel I would not recommend to anyone, but on a positive note they had plenty of hot water!!
