All kinds of Awesome on these two roads!
Returning from a week of study near Crossville Tennessee, I picked up my "nephew-in-law" in Knoxville and headed down the Alcoa highway for the Dragon on Friday afternoon. It was my first visit there. For any who are sadly uninformed, the Tail of the Dragon is an eleven-mile stretch of US Highway 129 south of Knoxville, as it approaches and finally crosses the North Carolina line at Deals Gap. Those incredible 11 miles are blessed with 318 wondrous curves and turns. The mountain road is a mecca for bikers and sports car enthusiasts alike, though the bikers clearly outnumber the rest of us.
It’s a great road for sport, mainly (obviously) due to its twists and turns, but also since there are no side roads from which unsuspecting cars might enter the highway, and because everyone on the road knows it’s used for sport, which means everyone is driving with the knowledge that a car or bike is likely to be flying around the next curve. Predictability, and the awareness not to venture across the yellow line, makes for a good degree of safety.
Diving into hairpin turns and accelerating out: pure bliss. Exactly what Mazda designed this car for (unfortunately this is best seen in the long video I can't seem to upload). Watching the sport bikers dragging their knees on the curves, and keeping pace with them: more bliss. It’s easy to find videos of cars driving the Dragon faster than I did (my runs are better described as merely “spirited” than truly “fast”), but during my 3 runs it was only bikers (and only a few of them) that outpaced me. I’m sure on other days I’d see faster cars there.
That one is too long for YouTube or Blogger to accept :(
I made my third and final run on Saturday, as I couldn’t resist taking this route home to middle Georgia, even though it would add 2 or 3 hours to the journey. Another good run, and exiting the Tail of the Dragon I continued on 129 southward, seeking the Cherohala Skyway which I had seen mentioned on some Dragon sites.
The Cherohala runs east/west, crossing the mountains to connect Robbinsville NC to Tellico Plains TN. Like the Tail of the Dragon, it’s park land, so there are no homes and businesses, and only the rare side road leading to hiking trails etc. It differs from the Dragon, in that it lacks the hairpin turns and concentration of really tight curves. But curves it has, some of them long sweeping curves, as it takes you along the tops of the mountains, offering views that can only be described as spectacular. Truly a Skyway. The run is 35-50 miles long, depending on what you call the endpoints. With its proximity to the Dragon, there are bikers and the occasional sports car enjoying the opportunity for speed in non-linear form. Best of all, even though it was a Saturday, there was little traffic.
Cherohala Skyway
It looks like my trips to Maryland and Pennsylvania will be longer in the future. They’ll now include a detour via the Cherohala and the Dragon, probably every time. Well, every time I’m in the Miata. Maybe not so much, if I’m in the Rodeo. :)
