Rides In The Smokies

On Monday Bob & Beth went off to ride "The Tail of the Dragon", a famous motorcycle road along the west edge of the park. It has 318 turns in 11 miles and riders come from all over to traverse it. (The locals will tell you that there are 25 rides in the area that are better—and a whole lot less crowded.) On weekends, it is practically a parade, but on a monday Bob & Beth found they had relatively to themselves. They returned via Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg (with lots of traffic) and through the park over Newfound Gap.

We took a shorter ride to Maggie Valley, via Cherokee, to visit the "Wheels Through Time" museum, an enormous collection of American Motorcycles with few classic cars thrown in. The motorcycle collection goes back to almost 1900, when they still had pedals and coaster brakes, basically bicycles with four cylinder engines. Once it gets to the 40's, there are mostly Harley's, as that was all that was left in the US. Many of the bikes, even the earliest, are in running order and many are in original unrestored condition. The folks who own the museum even race them. After the museum we rode back to the campground via the Blue Ridge Parkway which passes just above Maggie Valley and ends at the national park. It was quite a nice, fairly short ride and an interesting stop.