Day 14

Great Smokey Mountain National Park + Bottom of the Blue Ridge



Highway in the morning to get up to Smokey Mountain National Park. Had lunch in Gatlinberg. Holy tourist trap batman!!! The traffic and amount of people here was crazy. I think out of all the national parks so far this one had the most traffic! After SMNP we hit the bottom of the Blue Ridge to Asheville. I've done this ride before but it never gets old. This road is just as great as I remember from my trip a few years back. As the afternoon went on the storms started to roll in and we did get a bit wet on the way into Asheville. We did manage to avoid the heavy stuff by about 5 minutes!! The rest of the night was full of great food and beers in downtown Asheville!


Father son pic at SMNP


Starting the Blue Ridge


The bike lineup


Great view of the storms on their way in


Asheville, one of my favorite places!!




This next bar is a bike shop as well!!!


-Jason

 

Day 15

Asheville, NC to Roanoke, VA

Had some issue the the tracking app today only managed to get the first part. This ride was the Blue Ridge from Asheville to Roanoke. The morning was pretty cool and we ended up riding in the clouds in the AM north of Asheville. As the afternoon went on the weather took a turn and we spent about an hour watch a CRAZY storm blow over. I'm glad we did not get caught in it, it was ugly.

 

Day 16

Roanoke, VA to Gettysburg, PA



A bit of a push today. The rest of the Blue Ridge Parkway followed by Shenandoah National Park. We grabbled lunch at the bottom of SNP, after we started through the park. The 35mph speed limit was a killer and it took forever to get through. I've ridden this road 3 times now and this time felt like the slowest!!! After we avoided highways for the most part heading to Gettysburg for the night.

Gloomy day on Skyline drive

 

Day 17

Gettysburg, PA to Darien, CT



We got up to ride through the battlefields at sunrise. Such a great time to tour everything with no tourist around!! From there we headed north to home. As soon as we neared NJ we were welcomed by everyone driving like ********! Welcome home What I would give to be back riding in the west again! Overall one amazing trip!!

For me just over 6000 miles and my only issue a blown headlight and a bit of a rattle due to my primary chain tensioner being a POS. Oh yeah and a crazy dirty bike!!! This was one AMAZING trip, i'm already planning for next year!

Gettysburg at sunrise



No one else here but us!!!


Home, total miles


List of National Parks!!


-Jason

 

Dang! I wish I had seen your thread before today. I work in Salt Lake, and would have (potentially) met you for the ride from Evanston to Provo. You are right about it being hot and windy during that time though. I usually commute on the bike, but left it home a couple of those days, just too hot and windy for me.

Looks like an incredible trip though! I'm going to read through more later tonight. Keep on truckin' brother!

 

Looks like a great trip.
I have a couple friends headed to the east coast and back.
No route, just ride is the plan.
Some day

 

That's pretty much what we ended up doing. We kinda knew what parks we wanted to hit. When we got there we kinda figured out where to go next. If we felt like riding further we did. It worked out real well! The latter half of the trip in TN was planned due to the larger group and it was a bit of a pain. Keeping things flexible with hotels and camping made for stress free riding out west!

 

Great report. I'm really enjoying it.

I leave for Colorado day after tomorrow, Thursday 8/25. I think I'll use Rever to track my rides. How is it on battery drainage? I'll be using my iPhone 6s.

Keep the pics coming, they're great!

 

I had my phone plugged in 99% of the time so hard to tell battery usage. I wired up 12v to the front of my bike controlled via the accessory switch. I use a Battery Tender SAE to USB adapter that works great! I can grab a pic of the setup when I get home this evening.

Also last weekend I tried out another app that I may like more..... It seems to most of what Rever did plus you can do turn by turn directions. The only bad thing is I don't think you can plan routes on a website then access from the phone.
Link to App:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1089668246

-Jason

 

Thanks to jmoflhrc I am currently using Rever to track my rides. It works great and I love reviewing the map of the ride and altitude readout at the end of the day. I have used it for about 6 hours without plugging the phone (iPhone 5)into power. The battery was almost dead at the end. I keep the phone plugged into auxiliary power now.
I do not use the app to plan rides - only to track them. It's cool!