Thursday I did go with EOM-7, which was too much Blue Ridge Parkway and a detour for some goat trails at Linville Falls. At the Little Switzerland tunnel I pulled off into the grass to grab a photo and as soon as my front tire touched the pavement again the rear spun around and I tipped over to the left. No damage to the bike but my right leg got scraped up real good by the foot peg or brake pedal.
When I finally said enough of the BRP and told the GPS to take me home, it apparently decided that it should try to get me killed. It sent me south on NC-80, a road with nothing but switchbacks… and then took me north on NC-226, another crazy road with BRP access! Around that time I’d lost daylight and it started raining, and this was the same road that I’d been stuck with Monday night in the rain. I wasn’t too happy but the Shiner Bock waiting in my hotel room fridge made it a little better.
Friday morning I decided that I’d had enough with crooked roads and planned a meandering course towards home. Met some guys from my area at a rest stop on the highway and we road together through Gatlinburg and Cherokee, then I headed off on my own to Highlands and stopped for the night in Seneca, SC as I didn’t think there was enough daylight left to make the Greenville area. Somewhere in the Nantahala National Forest I got a cool picture of my bike under a waterfall.
Today I’ll wander from Greenville towards Savannah on the backroads and cross another section of Sumter National Forest, then roll down US-17 towards Jacksonville…
