Some of us met in Clinton Tennessee and we rode up to the
Alleghany Inn for the 2022 Meet In The Middle ride...
We met in the middle, but we didn't use the Blue Ridge Parkway
any. Joe led us on all good roads from Clinton to Sparta...
We went lots of good places... Shady Valley...
I tricked Roger into playing chess, and I spanked him like a
child in Walmart! You can ask anyone...
We stopped for gas at a place with a bunch of nice old tractors,
Joe liked this one...
Another stop along the way...
We stopped at the worlds 2nd oldest river...
Later we GTSed it...
Lots of good roads...
Some amount of chaos, but no dogs or riders were hurt making these
pictures...
The Alleghany Inn is perfect for a meet-up...
Britman had a scuffed saddlebag... when he showed up at Sparta, it
was fixed... Great Job!
I led a bunch of us on the same loop I had from last year. Everyone
knew that somewhere on the loop was a dirt road. I tried to find it
and change the blue line on the BFGPS, but I couldn't locate it to
edit it out. We did the loop in reverse of last year. After the
ride was about 2/3's of the way back to the motel we came upon the
dirt road. Some folks followed Joe off on some regular GPS paved
route, and the rest of us went over the dirt road... a steep gravelly
uphill followed by a similar downhill plus lots of sharp turns.
Here's one of the many wonderful places (and roads) we came to after
we got past the dirt...
The next day me and Ross headed to Maggie Valley to see the
motorcycle museum there. We discussed numerous routes we might
take. We ended up taking a route I had used from Marion VA back
to SC a couple of years ago. It worked great, really good roads and
no tourist traffic at all. Plus, we stayed dry all day, even though
we had to ride on many wet roads. In Hot Springs NC I got some honey
from a bee man...
Ross and I stayed at The Holiday Motel in Maggie Valley. I stayed there
with Joe and T-Bird 15 years ago... it is still a nice clean old-timey
park-at-your-door, and is still owned and run by the same couple.
They have a Breakfast place right next door with the right attitude
about what constitutes "breakfast"...
We ambled over to the Wheels Through Time museum. They had millions
of Harleys and four cylinder Indians and Hendersons and Excelsiors
and plenty of stuff I've never heard of...
And art too... numerous paintings by this Norman Rockwellish guy...
One Hundred Percent chance of rain today. Looking up at the mountains
from Maggie Valley showed them to be lost in the clouds. The Blue
Ridge Parkway separated me from South Carolina. I hit 215 to cross
over. 215 was wet and slick, I found out the scary way to be
careful with the throttle coming out of turns.
When 215 got to the place where it crosses over the BRP, sure
enough, I disappeared into a cloud. It was raining inside the
cloud and I couldn't see, so I flipped up my face shield and
pushed my sun glasses to the end of my nose and stared through
the slit... I was only in the cloud a few minutes and got home
dry as a bone!
Next year can't come soon enough. I'm sure I can find more dirt
roads...
-Mike
