Dragon = Slain!

This past weekend I joined up with 2 other bikes and rode up to route 129, otherwise known as "The Tail Of The Dragon".  This road has 318 turns in 11 miles.  It runs between Tennessee and North Carolina just outside the Smoky Mountains National Park. For more information on the road, click the link at the bottom of this article.

We left around 7AM and had a quick stop at Starbucks for coffee.  Me on the Versys, my neighbor on his Kawasaki Z1000 and my neighbor's buddy on his Ducati 1098.  We made one more quick stop for gas at the bottom of the Foothills Parkway and then proceeded to 129.

We cruised past the overlook(the unofficial start to the dragon) at exactly 9:15AM.  From there I was on my own.  I knew the other bikes weren't going to wait up for me.

Taking the turns, I was nervous.  I'm a fairly new rider.  I got my certification in February of last year, and have ridden approximately 3-4000 miles since then.  Most has been commuting back and forth to work, with some back east TN roads mixed in.

I found the road to be more hype than it was actual difficulty.  Sure, there are some turns that you need to slow for and some that you don't, but overall I had fun.  We stopped at the campground/store/restaurant at the end for a few minutes and I got a T-Shirt and some dragon stickers to put on my helmet.  We then rode out to Fontana Dam.  Fontana Dam is HUGE by the way.  It was supposedly built during wartime to generate enough power for the local plant producing all the metal for the planes.  It's something like 480 feet high.  Another cool fact is how the spillway works.  When they open the spillway doors to lower the water level, it shoots down at 95MPH and out the bottom of the spillway, where it flies through the air and lands 150 feet away from the bottom of the dam below.  This is to control erosion at the Dam's bottom edge.

I had more fun going back through from the North Carolina side than I did the other way.  The turns seemed...easier.  This was either due to my comfort level of riding later in the day, or just because the turns truly are better going that direction.

Along the way back one of the photographers got a great shot of me.  #1 signaling it was my first time through.

Killboy Photo

If you're ever in the East Tennessee area, look me up and we'l ride this road together.




More Info:
http://www.tailofthedragon.com/

Fontana Dam - More Info