Day 21: Knoxville, TN to Marion, NC

Up early and on the road. We headed south (yes, backtracking!) and east, taking route 129 which goes up and over the south end of the Smoky Mountains. A portion of this road is famous among motorcyclists as the "Dragon". It has 318 curves in 11 miles!! We got there very early in the morning with lots of fog and the road surface wet. The Dragon is pretty dangerous - lots of crashes, many fatal, happen there. We took the road at a moderate pace, slowing down in the fog. We made it safely over the top and down to the resort at Deal's Gap where there were many motorcycles just waiting to head over the Dragon from east to west. They were prepared to go a LOT faster than we had been. Of course, they weren't carrying lots of traveling gear, either.

We continued on to the Blue Ridge parkway. I had expected to find lots of traffic, with motor homes and trailers everywhere. Instead, what we found was light traffic, lots of motorcycles, and very nice road - good surface, lots of curves, and a reasonable speed limit. There are plenty of places to pull off and take pictures, too, but who wants to stop? By late afternoon we had to find gas, which meant leaving the parkway. We decided it go down route 80 to Marion. Before we got to the turnoff it started to rain. And then it started in with thunder and lightning. By the time we thought to stop and put on rain gear, it was too late - we were already soaked. Route 80 to Marion is 16 miles of narrow, twisty, descending mountain road. It took us well over 45 minutes to get down to road - we rarely got over 20MPH as the rain was just pouring down! Visibility was bad, too, and I was very tense the whole way down. We finally made it into Marion and found a motel. We spent the evening trying to dry our gear. Sigh. Wet riding boots are really hard to dry out.