It has been a long time since I have posted on the blog. Not long after my last post we had a life changing event happen in our family and I had to take time off from everything to handle it. I am finally ready to start again, and as this blog has always been a diary of sorts about our journey, I want to keep the travel and events in order. I decided to write this next blog picking up on our journey where I left off last summer and bring you to the present in the chronological order of the events.
With that said….I take you back to May 2017….We had finished our trip to Key West and were headed back to Orlando to pick up the bike and head to Tennessee…
This trip started out bad. Hopefully it will get better.
After a cancelled flight and very little sleep, we finally made it to Orlando, collected the bike from my niece and hit the road……we didn’t get far (thank goodness) before I realized that I had left my purse at my nieces house…..so we turned around and headed back to find it…..It took a bit of time to find (it was in her car) but we finally did and were back on the road and headed through the Ocala forest on our way out of Florida. We ended up spending the first night just across the border in Georgia, slept well and headed back out on the road the next morning excited to get to the Tennessee mountains.
We made our way through Georgia and into Tennessee. Due to all the delay at the beginning of our trip we were trying to get as far as we could that day and found a tiny town (if you can call it that) Ducktown, TN, with a small motel to spend the night. Now this little motel was clean and responsibly comfortable, but you had to check in at the gas station and get your ice from the soda machine there. Quite interesting. After checking in, we realized that we were starving, everything, except the gas station closed around 6 or 7 pm, luckily we found that the Hardee’s stayed open just a bit longer and we were able to get some food.
A big (huge) storm was rolling in that night so they let us park the bike up under the shelter on the sidewalk to keep it dry, which was nice of them….(our cover was destroyed)
After a good night’s sleep, we got up and hit the road. Luckily, although it was cloudy, there didn’t seem to be any rain heading our way so we headed out on the Cherohala Skyway toward Deals Gap, NC. Of course we stopped at the Cherohala Skyway Harley Davidson store. It was a cool little cabin like place.
We continued our ride and stopped at the Cheoah Dam where they filmed the jump scenes from the movie The Fugitive. It was pretty, but looks way bigger in the movie.
We made our way through the beautiful scenery going from Tennessee to North Carolina and on to Deals Gap to take on the Tail of the Dragon. The power was out at the restaurant and store at the bottom (or beginning) of the road because of the storm, but it was plenty busy anyway.
Of course we had to get a picture of the “Tree of Shame”…
We headed up the road on the tail of the dragon and had a blast! We saw two accidents (one pretty bad – the rider was taken out by ambulance, and one that just left the guy shaking his head and waiting on the tow truck) We also saw a frightened bear cub along the side of the road. It is definitely a ride worth taking, just take it carefully.
After the ride up and back down, we stopped at Fontana Village Resort for a late lunch/early dinner. It was very relaxing so we decided to spend the night at the hotel there and get some rest before heading into the mountains further.
The Road and The Nestless 