Two Roads

Between Washington, D.C. and Lincoln, Nebraska, I did a lot of driving.  Much of it was pretty mundane, especially the drives on the interstates.  But I had four drives that stood out for one reason or another.  Here are the first two.

The first was the drive from Winchester, VA to Asheville, NC.  The road itself wasn't too spectacular, but I made a couple of stops along the way that made it worthwhile.

In Winchester itself, I ate dinner with Donnie "NERD" Shelton and his wife, Sarah.  Winchester is too far away from a big city that I'd want to live there, but the historic part of town was pretty nice.  I stayed at their home for one night before heading south to North Carolina.  (And although I've met him before, I'd like to point out that Donnie was the first friend I made while playing The World of Warcraft!)

Along the way, I stopped to see the Natural Bridge, one of those stone arches above open air.  Part (all?) of The Last of the Mohicans was filmed there, and it is quite beautiful.  The only downside is the bridge is on private land, so you not only have to pay to get in, but there are really tacky tourist traps on the land, too, (away from the pretty part, at least) like a wax museum.  Do people actually go to wax museums?  And for any reason other than to say they did the cheesiest tourist thing imaginable?

The Natural Bridge

She spent the afternoon cruising down the river.

The second interesting road was my drive from Asheville to Nashville through the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains.  Well, interesting is the wrong word... "terrifying" is more accurate.

I intentionally avoided the interstates for this part of my drive so I could see more of the mountains.  So I programmed my GPS to "avoid highways."  Little did I know that it would take me onto U.S. Highway 129, which has to be one of the twistiest roads in the whole country.  Its curviest part is known by some as The Tail of the Dragon.  For about 90 minutes, my driving was constantly hand-over-hand, with either the gas pedal pressed to the floor to make it up the mountains, or the brake pedal pressed to the floor so I wouldn't sail off over a cliff or crash into a tree.

One wrong turn and I'd be in that lake.

The drive was pretty fun for the first 20 minutes or so, because there's no place else I've driven that requires, well... so much "driving."  But as the road got steeper and more crowded, and as my GPS let me know I had another 22 miles of it... Oi!  And there was almost no place to pull over.  I did pull over a few times, just to settle my nerves, or to let some bikers go past me, but I sure was glad when the ride was done.

I stopped at the dam at the end of The Dragon to stretch my legs and feel normal again.

I'm pretty sure it's a really fun place to ride motorcycles.  How do I know this?  Because there were about 10,000 bikers riding the road and milling around the pull-offs.  Oh, and because a couple of companies send photographers out to the side of the road to take your photo as you're driving/riding.  The photos of my dinky little Saturn aren't too interesting, but there are some cool shots of people on their motorcycles.  I bet if I rode a motorcycle to U.S. 129 just to ride that particular road, I'd like a shot of myself taking a sharp turn.