October 26
Today was Eric’s last day on the road with me, and we wanted to go out with a bang. We figured it was a 3 hour direct trip back to Huntsville, and it was 9:30 when we got to the bikes…so why go straight home? We set off in a heavy fog to run a few miles back to US28, and headed south on a section that Eric had not run yet, into Franklin, North Carolina.
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There are some towns that I always get lost in. No matter how many times I go there, I always take a wrong turn. Franklin is one of those towns. After about 30 minutes of bumbling around (you can ride almost every road IN Franklin in 30 minutes), I found the landmark that I was looking for, a little gas station call Loafer’s Glory, at the southern end of Wayah Road, where the old movie Thunder Road was filmed. This is another one of those “must do” roads. We gassed up and headed in. The fog was still hanging on, but I could see a little bit of blue sky once and again. I wondered when it would lift, and about 500 yards later, it was as if a curtain had lifted. We shot out of the fog, the sky was clear, it was sunny and warm, and life got a whole lot better. |
I had heard that Wayah had taken a lot of damage from the flooding rains of Hurricane Ivan, and now I got to see it first hand. There we lots of patches in the road where it had washed out, with plenty of gravel in the corners, so we notched the speed down a bit. There was one spot where a hillside had given way and taken the road out…there was a big, ugly scar like a huge scoop had torn the hill away, and the slope was littered with tree-trunks above and below. Further along the highway department was out mowing the shoulders, adding wet grass to the mix of slippery stuff on the roads. As we got further north the road conditions improved and we opened it up, blasting past hunters sitting in their trucks in their blaze-orange vests. Many had hand-held directional radio antennas. I had never seen hunters use these before, I supposed they used them to keep track of the dogs.
We took a break at the end of Wayah, then took 74 to 28 and backtracked to the community of Tuskeegee, where we turned west onto Yellow Creek Road. This is a jewel of a road that had been recommended to me in the spring. It is quite narrow and winds through a couple of small communities as it heads towards US 129. The pavement is a bit chopped up, but it doesn’t get a lot of traffic, and the scenery is great. Near the end we took a right on to a promising-looking road that quickly turned to gravel, so we backtracked to US 129, turning at Robbinsville to conquer the vicious twistys of NC 143 and the velvety sweepers of the Cherohala Skyway.
Cherohala Skyway overlook.
We stopped in Tellico Plains to refuel both machine and man, getting a tasty prime rib sandwich at the Tellicafe. From there, it was time to head to Huntsville. We jumped on the Interstate for our last high-speed run. It got HOT. I vented out my jacket and kept the windshield all the way down, but it still got uncomfortable. Sure wish I had a working thermometer. We got to Eric’s about 5, where Linda was fixing us a steak and potato dinner. Gotta love that girl. We grabbed showers while dinner finished, then ate, watched some TV, did laundry, caught up on email, and broke into Eric’s stash of rum. We were all in bed by 10. Well, Eric and Linda were in bed earlier, they had some business to attend to.
325 miles