I just completed a week long trip down to the Smokey Mountains for the third year in a row. My buddy was supposed to join me but he bailed a week before so I went alone which allowed me the opportunity to take more pictures. Figured, I'd make the most of all the pics I took and put together a ride report for anyone interested in reading it.
This trip is sort of an annual thing for me. I take different routes through the Allegheny Mountains each year both ways (down and back) to keep it interesting. I spend a lot of time reading up on the popular roads down there and plan my routes accordingly. I even had to learn to use the super user-UNfriendly "Base Camp" so that my GPS can keep me on the same routes that I intended to be on. Using Harley Trip Planner always calls for some surprises as it uses different "logic" than the Garmin does so if you don't have way points pinned on every piece of road you want to traverse it may take you down a different path which as well all know is pretty damn annoying.
The plan was to leave on a Friday morning and return the following Saturday afternoon. I'd take a leisurely 3 days to get down there, stay in Robbinsville for 3 nights, and then take 2 1/2 days back. I live just north of Toronto...as in Canada. I would have to hit the freeway for the first 2 1/2 hours until I get into NY state and then it would be backroads all the way from there. At least that was the plan. But as we all know, sometimes life doesn't go according to plan...
So I packed my **** up that morning and got ready to roll. It turned out to be a cool one and I wasn't planning on taking my leather jacket down as frankly I didn't have room for it and knew that I would only need it that morning. It's been unseasonably cooler than normal here. No, we don't get snow past April (actually March this year) but it's been taking a while for our days to warm up. So I grabbed a hoodie and hit the road a little later at around 10:30am.
Bike all packed up and ready to go.
Rolling out the driveway preparing to freeze my a$$ off for a bit.
The start of the ride was great....the sky was clear and the sun was shining. But as I got about an hour away it clouded over which was making it damn chilly! It would remain that way for a greater portion of the first day.
There was about a 20 minute wait at the border. The customs officer asked the standard questions and I was on my way into the States!
Finally got off the interstate and onto the backroads of NY State.
My first stop was for lunch in Ellicottville. A cute little touristy town that is popular during the winter as it offers lots of local skiing.
Started the trip off with a healthy soup and sandwich as I knew that the diet would be going out the window pretty soon after that. After all, I'm headed down to the south where they are known for their comfort food.
This trip it seemed that more and more driver's are impatient than I've experienced before. Going through Clearfield, PA I was nearing a cross street with an interstate entry/exit. A couple of impatient drivers rolled through their stop sign as I was approaching. I had my eye on the car waiting to make a left across my lane to get on the freeway when he did the unthinkable and tried to make it before I got there. He quickly realized that it was a bad decision and stopped - blocking my entire lane. I hit the brakes hard and barely stopped a bike length away. That was the closest I have ever gone down while riding in over 9 years. All because some stupid young kid decided he couldn't wait 3 seconds. Once I came to a stop he quickly peeled away since he was blocking my lane. I carried on.
Stopped in this tiny town near an abandoned house for a quick rest and photo opp.
Dinner was at a Cracker Barrel in Altoona, PA. I generally like to stay away from chains on a road trip but I always make the exception for Cracker Barrel. They don't have any in Canada and I love me some cornmeal battered catfish which CB serves up well.
I bedded down in some fleabag motel in Bedford, PA. Lots of trucks driving past the motel so the earplugs I use for riding came in handy for a somewhat decent night's sleep considering.
Last edited by Dark Knight; 06-27-2015 at 10:17 PM.
Remember when I said that things don't always go as planned? Well, I was reminded of this the first night. While checking out the local forecasts for the area's I was about to travel through the next day, I noticed that there were some severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings - specifically through the Allegheny Mountains. I was prepared to ride through some rain but the thought of getting caught in the mountains with flash floods washing me and my bike away proved to be enough for me to consider changing my plans. Reluctantly, I would need to hop on the interstate for a good portion of the day to get down to Martinsville, NC which is where I had originally targeted my second night to be.
So the next morning I hit the road and hopped on the 220 south towards Franklin. This was a complete departure from the route I had originally planned to take which really sucked a$$ as I was looking forward to this day as all the roads were supposed to be new to me. I didn't take a lot of pics this day as my goal was to beat the rain. And other than less than an hour of light rain in the morning it was all sunshine the rest of the day which proved unbearable wearing rain gear as the temperatures soared into the 90's. Particularly, when I got stuck in heavy traffic for a couple of miles on the interstate due to an accident resulting in a lane closure. After that it was "pedal to the metal" and riding at 80 mph passing pretty much every vehicle. Another reason why I hate riding on the freeway is that for some reason I feel the need to hurry which results in me riding much faster than I should. Luckily, I was able to avoid any LE on this trip.
Getting close to Martinville I needed a stop at this gas station that was quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
About a half an hour away from Martinsville the clouds began to move in quick. I was literally riding on the dividing line with sunny skies on the left and dark clouds on the right. It was lightly spitting as I debated stopping to put my rain gear back on but decided to press on. I made it to a motel I quickly found on my iphone app, grabbed a sandwich at Subway and checked in. It started raining hard 30 mins later and would continue to do so through most of the night. Day 2 wasn't what I had planned but at least I was able to avoid riding in thunder storms.
Sunday has traditionally been the best day to ride on my previous trips. The roads are fairly devoid of traffic and I would be riding through North Carolina where you can't find a straight road if you tried. Like this one.
I left the motel at 8am and after about an hour into my ride I passed through Mount Airy. Andy Griffith was born in Mount Airy and it is believed to be the inspiration for the town of Mayberry on the Andy Griffith Show. This was before my time but I do remember watching a few episodes when I was a kid (had to be reruns me thinks).
They have a couple of buildings set up to replicate part of the set of the Andy Griffith show (I think). So these next two pics will mean more to you old folks than the youngin's reading this.
Riding out of Mayberry (Mount Airy) is when this day would go to ****. It was a perfect day - the sun was shining. The roads were great with mountains on either side of me as I entered the "town" of Low Gap. I was about to embark up a mountain side when suddenly there was a road closure due to construction. I tried pushing past the road blocks but eventually ran into workers who let me know that the road ahead was impassable. As I made a U-turn I noticed my Garmin was frozen on the screen where it asks if I want to recalculate the route. So after forcing a shut down and turning it back on the maps looked different. It no longer had detail and was showing me riding beside the road that I was supposed to be riding on. The damn thing had lost it's map! Now, I'm not talking about losing the route that I had loaded onto it but it lost its' actual mapping system making it un-useable!
The locals were of no use in being able to tell me how to get around the road closure so I did what any man would do in this situation. I picked a road that ran in the direction I wanted to head in and took my chances. And as in most cases when this happens I chose poorly. The road quickly turned into a very small back road that was very technical with ample amounts of gravel in the corners. It was such a PITA to ride these roads that I decided that turning back was not an option as I didn't want to have to re-ride these roads where in some places you had to downshift into 1st as the corners were so tight. So I decided to pull over when I finally came upon a spot where I can do so and turn my attention back onto trying to fix the Garmin.
When I listened closely I can hear the banjo's playing in the distance (okay, not really but it felt that way). Some of the locals were driving by in their old pick-ups as I prayed that there wouldn't be a hillbilly who thought that I had a "purdy mouth".
I messed around with the stupid Garmin for about 20 minutes until I realized that it wasn't going to be fixed at the side of the road. So I hopped back on my bike and kept riding...until the road turned into a dead-end. F*ck! I had to back track to another road that eventually took me to a small gas station where the nice southern gentlemen told me of a Dairy Queen a few miles away. As I had hoped, the Dairy Queen had wi-fi so I pulled out my laptop and went to load the map back onto the GPS. But after over an hour of trying to get the damn thing to work I realized that it wasn't going to happen. The computer couldn't see the GPS so there was no way of reloading the map. Of course being a Sunday, Garmin support was closed and I couldn't find squat on Google. So I borrowed a pen and paper and started scribbling the routes I would need to take to get me to Maggie Valley. To save the day from being a complete f*ck up, I decided that I was still going to make my way through Blowing Rock then head south from there. This meant that I would still get to enjoy the last half of my planned ride.
Let me tell you that going off of written directions is a time consuming process as I often had to pull over and reference Google Maps on my iPhone (where I had signal) to make sure that I was going down the right road and that I hadn't missed my turn. To add to the frustrating day, it was over 90 degrees so I was sweating my a$$ off as I finally made it into Blowing Rock. If you haven't rode down Route 221 I highly recommend it if you're in the area. It's one of those roads that Google shows as curvy but what you can't see from Google is how scenic it is as you go up and down a mountain side. But the best surprise of the day was riding through Lake Lure, NC. It's not at all like I had imagined it after seeing it on the map. It is a curvy, but slow, road that takes you to a beautiful lake with public beach that is surrounded by mountains. The main strip is a very touristy street but it gives off a very cool, fun summer vacation spot. I will definitely have to return to that spot with my old lady at some point.
Lake Lure, NC. Pictures do not do this place justice.
The "town" or community of Bat Cave proved to be disappointing as I barely noticed that I had entered into it. I was hoping for a cool sign that read Bat Cave that I can take a picture of but there didn't appear to be one.
To further add to my frustration on this day I had discovered two problems with my bike. First the air cleaner was making a loud tapping sound which I later concluded to be "reversion" caused by the combination of my Woods cam and SE heavy breather. Quite annoying though as the sound was fairly loud and seemed to have been brought on by the hot temperatures as it wasn't making this noise before.
Also, I discovered that my bike would surge at steady throttle between 3,200 - 3,700 rpm under load (uphill through the mountains). At first I thought it might be the gas as every station seemed to add 10% of ethanol which they don't do in Canada. My bike has been properly tuned and didn't have this problem before but it would be hard to say that positively since we don't have mountains nearby. But on a day when you're GPS takes a dump, you're sweating your ***** off, and now your bike is running less than ideally the only silver lining is that I was on a bike trip and had a week off of work.
As I finally entered the Smokey Mountain area I took 276 into Waynesville. I followed a few bikes down the road which is your typical area road through mountains.
Tired and hungry I finally arrived in Maggie Valley. I was originally supposed to have arrived there for around 4pm but with the stupid road closure and GPS problems I arrived there closer to 8pm.
I enjoyed another fried catfish dinner at this little diner that was next to my motel.
I stayed at another $50 motel called the Rolling Brook Motel...I think. It was right next to Wheels Thru Time. The owner had a heavy southern accent and seemed to be a decent honest guy though a bit chatty. We shot the sh*t for a bit before I turned in exhausted by a long day on the road.
Good read. My wife and I are leaving for Atlanta Tuesday morning (from NJ) and plan to ride some of the same places you've just been. In my opinion, the Allegheny mountains in PA is just about the prettiest place on earth. We rode to Toronto in 2005 and came home through the Alleghenies. I LOVED it!
We do have smartphones, but we navigate the old fashioned way: maps! They don't blank out, they just tear and get coffee spilled on them... I write down the route, landmarks and approximate mileage on a folded piece of paper and stick it in my windshield bag, referring to it as needed. Double check the map at gas stops as needed.
Great pix, I'm looking forward to riding there the next few days!
Last edited by northeastconfederate; 06-28-2015 at 08:16 PM.
06-27-2015, 07:00 PM
Smokey Mountain Ride Report
