Monday I road the EOM-6 route. Was out for 10 hours and got rained on for probably 9 of them, and to top things off I picked up a nail in my front tire. It was a good thing I picked up that tire repair kit because I was out in the middle of frickin’ nowhere on a tiny road that was posted “Dead End” but really wasn’t. Unfortunately the air compressor blew the accessory fuse on my bike and that made the whole thing even more sucky because getting at the fuses with the dash shelf installed is something of an ordeal.
After that I stopped for dinner in the next town, aborted the route and headed back to the hotel. Of course, I was still in the mountains, it was dark, and I had a whole bunch of twisty roads to cover before getting back to highway. A couple of times I wished I was carrying dry socks and a sleeping bag ’cause I would have been happy to just call it quits for the night on the side of the road.
Tuesday I road the EOM-1 route. It was a beautiful day until I saw the “Pavement Ends” sign. We’d been warned about that over the weekend but I’d forgotten. I trudged through the goat trails, praying not to drop my bike because the dirt was still wet and I was wearing sneakers so I’d probably never get it back up on my own, and terrified of going over the edge and my corpse never being found. After two miles I was on pavement again, and then back in the mud for another mile-and-a-half or so.
When that was all over I was in a magnificent place and I started enjoying the ride again, and stopped to take lots of pictures. Originally I’d planned to abort the ride around Elk Park because I started late and didn’t want to be on twisty mountain roads after dark, but I was making great time and thought I might actually finish. Until I got to the north side of Beech Mountain and the route had me turning on to another goat trail. I said enough and told the GPS to take me to Starbucks.
Yesterday I planned my own ride. Slabbed it out to Knoxville, hit US-129 south, slayed The Dragon and road the Cherohala Skyway. The Tail of the Dragon was something of a disappointment, the stretch from the overlook to the camp site is non-stop turns but it’s over pretty quick and I didn’t think it lived up to the hype. Two of my rides have gone through Shady Valley, aka The Snake, and I think that area is much more enjoyable with far less traffic.
Cherohala, however, lived up to my expectations. Scenic and beautiful, very little traffic, well-maintained road surfaces, plenty of fun twisties. Very low cloud ceiling on the stretch at 5,000+ feet, could just about touch the sky. Got a little wet at the start of the descent but aside from that it was the perfect ride.
Haven’t made up my mind yet for today. Was originally leaning towards just going to Shady Valley and running the mountains there all day, but after studying the remaining route that I haven’t run yet I see EOM-7 taking a different path into the valley and has some stretches on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The weather today looks good and every other time I’ve been on the BRP during this trip it was been fogged in and rainy, so that is very tempting…
