Ok, we started the day with a free breakfast -- Fresh Cooked Belgian Waffles with butter jam and warm maple syrup.   And coffee, lots of good hot coffee.   And little danish.  And little muffins.  And bananas and apples.  We then took the road maps out and hunted up some places to go and things to do.  





Here are a couple of pics of the HEATED indoor jacuzzi and heated pool that allow guests to play in the water all year long.  Not too shabby for $29.99 ain't it?







We didn't leave until 10:10 AM because it was raining lightly during the night and we waited until the roads began to dry out before leaving.  Of course it rained on us within 15 minutes of staring out, but just a sprinkle that was over inside 15 minutes as we got to rolling good.





First stop was Bryson City which contains the infamous Road To Nowhere.   Here is pictorial proof we went to Nowhere and returned alive to tell about it.  The mysterious third person (who chooses not to be named) who went to Nowhere with us and he held the camera for the group shot that he didn't want to be seen in for fear of his life wife.  

(something about not getting caught out lying to his significant other about where he was that day, or something like that)





On the road to Nowhere the wildlife is not used to you being there.  MMRanch scared two squirrels really badly -- and he rolled the third one under his rear tire which he says he didn't even feel.  

This pic is the guilty squirrel killer returning from disposing of his little victim ....   Kim, you would have loved that little squirrel, he was a cute as a button -- you would have wanted to cuddle him and rub noses with him he was so durn cute.   I wanted to take some pics of him for you but MMRanch wouldn't let me ....

Then we went up Hwy 28 Fontana road to Fontana Dam and took some pics of the SECOND HIGHEST DAM IN THE UNITED STATES.  The only one taller is Hoover Dam ....   this little boy was built in just 2 years during WWII under A-1 FULL MILITARY TOP SECRET classification as it was the secret power source that powered the TOP SECRET Oak Ridge uranium separation plants for the atom bomb.  









The visitors center was added in the 1950s after the TOP SECRET classification was dropped since folks realized 6 little towns had disappeared off the map and literally 10,000 people were relocated by the Army.  

The visitor's center had a top secret secondary purpose that is still pretty much a secret -- if you look at the telephoto pic carefully you can see the underside of the visitor's center has multiple windows (lighting lab space or offices) and you can still see some freight containers stacked on the bomb proof concrete pad that is hidden under the visitor's center.     Also note the dual spaced out bomb resistant thick-assed concrete pads that shielded this underground warehouse space -- the "visitor's center" is really spaced out pretty far laterally and it is REALLY REALLY well constructed, don't cha think?

We also noted that the parking lot for the visitor's center has spaces for 200 cars on that side and a secondary parking lot with about the same number of spaces on the other side of the road that has some sort of tunnel access point on it that doesn't even show up on the other side of the road at all.   There is a bunch of stuff at Fontana Dam that is underground apparently -- and around 400 people worked there at one time while it was still webbed in military security during the height of the 50-60's cold war era.  

I also noted that the three huge articulated overflow water gates have no visible outlet associated with them .... where they go to or what they actually do on the way out is a mystery as well.    But they were huge and the big valves were built out of stainless steel during war time, so whatever they did was pretty important to the guys who built them ....





We then ripped up Hwy 28 to the Dragon, ripped up the dragon and stopped at the turn around point to take this scenic pic that we all remember.   Then it rained on us a bit as we ripped on into Tennessee heading towards Gatlinburg and the $29.99 hotel for day #2.

We ate dinner and met up with BigZuk in Pigeon Forge.   Pizza was good and we got to spend some good company with BigZuk who we will meet up with tomorrow AM.

Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are totally tourist oriented, fun to ride through but we really didn't stop and do very much -- too tired !!

MMRanch, anti-animal rights activist extraordinary

Riding at the front of the pack with the rest of us as witnesses to all the little forest furry critters that were confused by the bright headlight and did the instinctual double back zig-zag right under his wheels ....

I can testify that he never rode over anything on purpose and he always honked, braked and tried to evade if he saw them first.

But he still scared hell out of 2 squirrels, smushed one totally and then managed to run over a chipmunk of all things.

.... the braking part didn't help them any, BTW.

This unusually high animal kill ratio has to do with where we rode, which were the smallest black lines we could find, and the cloud cover, which was immersion style.  The animals were feeding on the shoulder of the road, saying "Nobody comes by here very much so we aren't used to traffic and here comes motorcycles racing around the turn leaned way over surprising me totally and I go do my little instinctual zig-zag thing."

.... splat !!  

Plus, we are inside a cloud so nobody can see very far, neither biker nor critter.

Now, I never rode over anything on purpose but cars, panel vans, mac trucks, sports cars, sports bikes, TONS of Hurleys and on Fontana Dam Road I finally rode over a Ducati !!!  

My very first Ducati !!!

Living critters, not so much, but I will admit that you don't always see them if you do run over them because you are eyes forward and you are always running over pebbles and acorns all the time and you get used to them little sudden unexpected "bumps".   And in my case there wasn't ever anybody right up close behind me to say what actually happened.

 
 


We stayed at the River Bend Lodge or some such name, at a HotWire price of $29 -- and this was the lesser of the hotels we stayed at for $29 on the trip and it wasn't bad at all by any means although it was the least good of the group we sampled.   $29 HotWire hotels, I am not skeered of them any more and would use the service any time I went anywhere that I wasn't carrying my wife.

(women expect more than a 2 star hotel going on a vacation -- remember that -- your motorcycle buddies don't care one little tiny bit as long as there is a bed in there)

Speaking of beds, this place had the best durn sleeping bed you ever slept on -- MM wanted firmer (like the bed on the first night) but this one suited me jest fine.   He's used to sleeping on the ground, Scoutmaster and all ....





Parking was excellent as we stayed in room 107 and the view from our room was good too -- somebody had a chalet set up on the side of the mountain up over our heads that we could look at and admire.



Breakfast was donuts, toasted bagels and cereal (no fresh cooked Belgian waffles) but it did the trick for us.   We had lots of company from little old ladies on vacation from Ohio and Wisconsin who wanted to know where we came from and why we were wearing leather at breakfast and all ....  I watched them little old ladies eyeballing MM's butt sticking out of his chaps and got I a me good morning coffee chuckle out of it ....  

They wuz remembering stuff from their wicked checkered pasts and lusting after him, I do believe.

 
We rode a lot of first class bike roads on the way to Linville Falls and Zuk led at a pace that made them truly challenging.   Like I said, he rides better than I do, so I was struggling to keep up and MM was falling behind because he simply refuses to go double the posted speed limit and he is reluctant to pass large stuff on double yellow lines.  

I got the full benefit of the Zuk School of Late Braking and Hard Accelerating, something I always attend religiously whenever I go to the mountains.   It makes you a better rider, really it does.







We didn't stop for much other than gasoline and piss stops and we rode a half dozen roads I couldn't name or find again if you put a gun to my head, but it was a total blast and we spent until dusk reaching Linville Falls having ridden through drizzly misty stuff (clouds actually, we ran hard through a bunch of silly clouds -- let's call them what they were).

We got to Linville Falls Camp Ground and the guy there told us we'd better go get some dinner before everything closes at 8:30 PM, so we did.



This is the Hardrock Cafe, where we ate meatloaf special with 3 veggies and a pair of the best biscuits you ever ate for dinner.   Best meal of the trip so far (and I was exhausted and hungry and ready for it, lemme tell you).   They closed the place up around us but let us finish our dinner and talk a bit in peace, so we left them a nice tip, put our jackets on and went outside .....





..... into the frick'n Twilight Zone !!!    

You missed out on the solid white background outside the cheerful windows of the dinner scene with Zuk and MM chatting third pic up -- them clouds we had been eating all afternoon crept back up after to haunt us as zombie clouds which wouldn't let us see our bikes in the parking lot and only let us see the faint glow of headlights and tailights of the occasional traffic on the road as it silently drifted past ....  

We had mebbe 3-5 miles to ride to get back to the campground and it was Surrealistic and Scary to say the least.   I wiped my face plate 10 times in that 3-5 miles just to get the mist off so I could kinda see -- mostly.   There was no sound, even the bike noises didn't go very far in the solid air.

We missed the turn off to the camp ground even though we were in first gear and we were looking for it -- it was that cloudy and dark and murky.  

On the way up the driveway to the camp ground we got bushwacked by fallen limb on the road that wasn't there an hour or so ago when we left to go get dinner, and MM got attacked by a kamikaze  zombie chipmunk that tried to bite his rear tire as we crept on up the driveway.    



Creepy stuff, let me tell you ...   that little death squeal from the chipmunk just fit the ambiance of the night perfectly.    

The campground was deserted and it had occasional street lights and foot level path lights that glowed weakly in the fog as we bore left and kept left and crept on back to the very very back to find the Outpost Camping Cabin where we were staying.   I was a waiting for the vampires and the zombies to shuffle out of the dark and come after us, but they never made it out until later on, when it was time to GO FIND THE BATHROOM on foot ....

You can get lost on foot in a large campground area when looking for the head, you know.   When the clouds fly so low they put a London fog to shame and you arrived by headlight power and there ain't no headlights any more ....

Ask us, we can tell you all about it.   Flashlights don't really help very much in suchlike conditions, and on the second trip out around 3:30 AM I didn't even have one of those.

MM was a little bit pissed off by this time (he had really trusted that stupid tourist map that lied to us) and he was up in front at the time so he decided that he wanted to see if he could lose us some since he got his Hurley all tightened up and it wasn't slapping on the primary drive chain any more.  

We found this out later on when we were lined up taking a piss at the Mt. Mitchell downstairs bathroom after the ride up.

"Did you guys have any problems keeping up with me?"   "No, it was a good pace, fast enough to be interesting but slow enough so you could notice the scenery"  "Oh"  "Yeah, it was good, I had to downshift a few times but no, I was always just back of you."

He 'fessed later that he had given it all he had to the point he was breaking his rear tire loose on the straight aways and he was skidding his front tire on the wet pavement on the turns.

But it answered his real question -- his 600 pound 1,200 cc Hurley Sportster can eat our cake BAD on any dry pavement straight away where he can get out of second gear into 3rd to run 3rd on up, but below that the Savages rule up in them thar mountains ....  

.... and in the really curvy mountains, that's about where you stay in 2-3 gear all the time with 4th only on the straightaways.

But he since won't do "double the posted speed limit" he loses most of that advantage to a respect for legal speed limits (and fear of a scraped up hide, too).   And he has to fight hard to get that 600 lb motorcycle around a tight curve to the point he can lose tire traction way way way before we do.  

Effectively, his 600 pound 1,200 cc Sportster is a close performance match for a Savage until the curves get really tight, then he loses ground all the way.

Which wasn't what he expected to happen at all, so now he plans to do a high performance engine rebuild on his old Savage this upcoming winter and then come springtime he might find a used Sporty adding some good dollar value to his checking account.


===================================


Anyhow, we had finally made it to Mt. Mitchell.



Here is the peak of Mt. Mitchell, you can see the sorts of nasty strong winter winds that hit the peak during winter blizzards from the damage the trees take.



Neither Zuk or I wanted to walk the extra 600 vertical feet straight up to the tippy top to see the grave site (I had used all my pain drugs up and Zuk was not getting very much relief from his although he had quite a few left -- so I bummed one of his and took it and it worked just fine for me).



Sister peak that is 36 feet shorter than Mt. Mitchell.   Still pretty tall and you can see the clouds going through it.   While we were up there in the parking lot it actually snowed a few flakes on us while we were going through these clouds -- it was COLD up there to be sure, but I sure didn't expect to see an occasional fat snowflake blowing on by my face.









And, here is the proof shot of the intrepid Three Musketeers with Mt. Mitchell snow clouds moving along behind us ....




We split up from the Mt. Mitchell parking lot with Bigzuk and MMRanch heading towards Tennessee and Oldfeller going the other way towards North Carolina.  

To prove that he really loves us, the Good Lord God kept us safe the whole trip and He kindly provided us with a last serving of pork chops delivered right up to the mountain top for us to eat on the way back down .....






Anyhow, we left the Mt. Mitchell parking lot at 4:15 PM and I rolled into my garage at at Fayetteville at 10:45 PM.  

I was one very tired but quite happy puppy.

   

Old feller, the pics of where you all rode
as well as stayed are very nice. You guys
did well for $29.99 per night. Wow that
jazuzzi and pool looked inviting..
You guys were very lucky to have the time
and weather to enjoy a great time.
Sorry to hear your back, hip and foot gave
you some problems on the last lag of the trip.
I do hope your feeling better now.
You did good to get in this ride in the time allowed.
Again I will concede only that you win for "your  area".
We both have beautiful areas to ride and enjoy.
It is great we both were able to enjoy some time with
other riders and post the pics.
Now time to start thinking of next year rides.. No the
Dragon does not count. That is a ride you take every
or just about every year. The next one has to be a
place you have never ridden before..
You have plenty of time to think of it and plan
for it.. lol...
Oh and you were right, the only thing I would drool
over is the critters... The 4 legged ones not the
2 legged ones..  
Hugs and again thanks for sharing this with us..
Come out west someday and ride the trails with us.. kim

Old Feller, I was once a lil gal, I would have
loved for my father to ride me on the back
of his bike. To have those memories and
had the chance to gain experience thru
him, is something no text book or
anyone could teach me.
Lil Suzuki Princess is very loved and well
taken care of. Her Dad makes sure she
is dressed for the weather and has all
the gear on as well.
She is secured to him and as long as he
stays on the bike, so does she.
Yes something could happen to her on the
bike, then again it could just as easily happen
in a cage.
What age then do you think a gal should
start riding a bike? Why should it be
any different for a boy than a gal? kim