A soggy Dragon

Motorcycle people have known about it forever, but not long after they discovered it, car guys found out about the "Tail of the Dragon", as US Route 129 is known on the stretch where it enters Tennessee from North Carolina through Deal's Gap. Oddly enough, even living just a couple hours from the place for seventeen years, I never managed to get around to going there. Which made it an excellent plan for today.

By the time I stopped for lunch in Murphy, NC, it had already been an excellent drive. I left town by way of the area my brother and I used to live, since I knew there were some good two-lanes in that neck of the woods.  Highway 129 was already living up to its reputation as I wound my up through the section north of Desoto Falls, which is still one of my favorite stretches of road.

Now, don't take any of this the wrong way: I wasn't hooning it up. These are public roads, and I'm driving a car that's not broken in-- and she's my ride home. There were no screaming tires, no glowing brake rotors, no drama at all. I won't tell you no speed limits were broken, but I really wasn't flogging the car or anything. I got that out of my system in the Cashmere Silver one on the track yesterday. Shoulda painted that one in a shade named "Red-headed Stepchild" or "Capitals in the Playoffs". But I digress.

Part of me didn't want to stop for lunch. It had been a nice, partly cloudy morning, but as the morning went on, overcast conditions were rearing an ugly head. But I was ravenous and we don't have Zaxby's back in Maryland, so I stopped. 

On the roads leading up to the Gap, it began to seem like I was seeing a lot more performance-oriented cars then usual. Instead of the usual hordes of lumbering SUVs and indistinguishable minivans, there were cars that caught my eye. Nothing overly exotic, but a Frisbee here, a Z4 there. A Boss 302 and a "mere" Mustang GT not long after.

If I knew anything about motorcycles, I'd have probably been impressed by the hordes of Harleys and Goldwings. I did recognize a K1600-- I had just read about a motorcycle running around with am inline-6 motor, which I thought was ridiculous (which is to say, I approve heartily).

Unfortunately, the rain found me before I got to Deal's Gap. Worse, that didn't ruin the experience. Honestly, neither did the slow Harley riders-- to a bike, they pulled off to let faster traffic go by. And the various EZ-Ups with banners for killboy.com or us129photos.com shooting pictures that one can purchase later didn't ruin it, either-- but the combination of all that, with a side of how excellent the drive that morning had been, it all made Deal's Gap somewhat  anticlimactic. I'd left plenty of time to go back the other direction, but didn't have an overwhelming desire to do so. I have even less desire to go see what grey-skied photos the hucksters got of my car.

Instead, I decided to do some exploring and hung a right on the Foothills Parkway. Excellent decision. It's not a long road, it's something of a baby Skyline Drive. At Look Rock, I got out and wandered up to the observation post, which is a strange modern concrete structure that contrasts with the surrounding greenery, looking doubly out of place since it's not National Park Service Rustic. 

I got to Knoxville (Alcoa, to be more accurate) and got checked into the hotel, but had come up with further plans on the way through: I had passed a drive-in theater in Marysville playing Iron Man 3, so I figured me and the car could catch a movie after some local barbecue. The barbecue wasn't bad at all.  Smokin Joe's doesn't smoke the pork as long as I do, so they serve it chopped rather than pulled, but it's got plenty of flavor. When the waitress warned me three times that the "Smoke" sauce was really hot, I figured it was right up my alley-- and it was.