Day 15, Greenville, SC to Knoxville, TN 170 Miles

Greetings friends.

   Thanks for staying with us through the delays in blogging. Even though we're on vacation there is not a lot of time to sit and blog. It seems we are either on the road, touring and seeing sights, making hotel reservations, eating or sleeping.

   Today we headed for Knoxville, TN, only 170 miles away. Our route took us through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, one of the few free-access national parks in the country. Although our route was relatively short, it was a winding all-day trek. We often seek out small two lane roads through local towns in lieu of taking the interstate highways. It makes for less stressful riding and gives us the local flavor of the area.

   We crossed the North Carolina border, departed Herndersonville, NC, and intersected the Blue Ridge Parkway for the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. En route the we finally got some relief from the oppressive heat and humidity that we have been suffering for the past two weeks. In fact, the temperature dipped into the sixties as we headed up into the mountains, requiring us to dig out our jackets and sweatshirts, those that have not already been mailed home, that is.

   We stopped at the park visitor center where me met a large group of women riders from the Women in the Wind all-ladies motorcycle club. The claim national and world-wide members. There were there to ride the Tail of the Dragon (Hwy 129) at Deal's Gap, NC, famous for its 311 curves in eleven miles. We intend to ride the Dragon tomorrow ourselves.

   The as the parkway wound its self up into the mountains and across the ridges toward the park a light rain began to fall and the fog settled in the low lying areas making riding particularly challenging. At times, all one could see were the tail lights of the bike ahead of you. We slowed to 20 MPH in some areas as the rain increased.

   The road across the park is only some 20 miles long but is very scenic, absent the rain and fog. Departing the park we entered Gatlinburg, TN, where the temperature dramatically increased to the mid-eighties. Gatlinburg is like riding down the middle of Main Street Disneyland. It is wall-to-wall tourists in tank tops, shorts and sandals wandering in and out of souvenir stores, T-shirt shops, restaurants and amusement parks. We looked and felt quite out of place all bundled up in our jackets and rain suits. Gatlinburg flows into Pigeon Forge, home to Dolly Parton and Dollywood, and then into Sevierville. It is a non-stop trail of amusement park rides, restaurants, shops and hotels. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and dead slow, not well-suited to air cooled motors.

   We pulled into Knoxville in the early evening, checked into a very nice Holiday Inn and walked to a large outdoor courtyard downtown with a variety of restaurants, most with a one hour wait. We were able to get into a new one with no waiting. I guess it was a speciality restaurant because most of the booths and tables were occupied by male couples gazing longingly into one another's eyes. So what, we were hungry, it was late and we enjoyed a good dinner there.

   Tomorrow, we are headed for the Tail of the Dragon. Stay tuned. It's all right here in the diaries friends, mostly true, most of the time.

John and the Usual Suspects.