Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Today the goal was to start making our way home by taking the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs 469 miles through the Appalachian Mountains from Cherokee, North Carolina to Waynesboro, Virginia. It’s a National Parkway that’s also known as “America’s Favorite Drive”.
We left Pigeon Forge and back to the Tail of the Dragon. We never stopped the day before at the gift shop they had and we wanted stickers and a T-shirt. I believe we were in in Four Corners Monument when we saw someone wearing a cool shirt with the logo for Tail of the Dragon. So, we went back through. This time it was a slow ride. Since there was a a Jeep Invasion event in the area, there were a bunch of Jeeps going slow down the road. At one point we came around a corner and going the other direction was someone on the Harley-Davison’s Pan American adventure bike. He was laying it down! We didn’t realize until later, but when we checked the photographers websites to see our photos, we saw he had a pit bull on the back of his bike. It was actually quite impressive! I ended up searching him and following him on Instagram, haha.
After stopping to get stickers and shirts, we headed back to Cherokee, NC where the the parkway begins. Shortly after starting at mile marker 469, I wanted to stop at some of the pull-offs for some photos, but Eddie told me there are hundreds of pull-offs, so we just rode down the parkway and I would pull out the GoPro to take photos. The views truly were amazing. I would highly suggest taking a ride on the parkway if you’re ever near Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
We took the parkway until we reached Ashville, NC. We got off the parkway near mile-marker 393.5. Eddie had a friend that moved to the area a year or so ago so we stopped in the area to grab an early dinner. We found a place called “Stone Ridge Tavern” while Eddie waited for him to respond. When he responded, we told him where we were and he said he lived about 5 minutes away. He met us there and we had some delicious food. I didn’t know it, but he moved down to work at the new Pratt & Whitney facility there. It is a brand new 1.2 million square foot, state-of-the-art, turbine airfoil production facility. I thought that was pretty neat!
After hanging out for a little while, we left there and got back on the parkway. We kept riding until it got very foggy. At that time, we began looking for places to stay for the night. We didn’t want to ride through the dense fog at night in the dark. The temperature also dropped quite a bit and it was getting chilly. We just so happened to get off the parkway in Little Switzerland, NC to check it out quick near mile-marker 334. When we pulled off the parkway, there was a large sign for “Big Lynn Lodge” which was just a mile or so up route 226A. We pulled in and they had availability, so we decided to stay there. After checking in and getting to our designated parking space for our room, we met Ellen.
Ellen was an older woman that was excited to talk to us. She was telling us that she started riding BMW sport touring motorcycles all over the country and we chatted with her a bit and shared stories and pictures from our adventures. She was there on her trike from outside of Tampa, Florida. I was quite amazed at the places she’s been in the country as a woman riding motorcycles. She was so excited for us that she even offered us some Blue Moon’s.
We finished the day with about 256 miles and near 10 hours of riding.
Google photo album: Day 13
Adventures of Matty Q 