The Dragon...revisited!

Whew, we've covered a lot of miles since I last posted!  Let me back up and start from the last post. 

Bright and early on Monday morning, we bid farewell to south Louisiana and my family and started rolling east.  Yesterday was our longest day...600+ miles to get us from Houma, LA to the base of the TN mountains.  The temperature stayed in the 90s for most of the day, so it was hot, but the traffic and precipitation cooperated with our ride.

This morning, we checked out from our hotel and made our way towards the Cherohala Skyway.  We could not have asked for a better riding day; hardly a cloud in the sky, moderate temperatures, and almost no traffic to speak of.  We started the Skyway from the TN side which skirted the river up to an altitude of approximately 5000 feet before dropping us back down in NC at the foot of the Tail of the Dragon.  For those of you new to this blog, I had ridden  this area a couple of years ago when I moved from NC to TX.  This time, I rode both the Cherohala Skyway and the Tail of the Dragon in the opposite directions.

 

 Another big difference from last time is that I didn't ride it solo, I had company!  To the left is a photo of Jim and Andy next to the tree of shame, though I'm happy to report that we all "slayed" the dragon safely and left no parts on the roadway to be added to the tree of broken off motorcycle parts left by less fortunate riders. 

Relatively speaking, today was a light mileage day for us (250 miles compared to 500 and 600 hundred from previous days).  Once we completed these couple of legendary rides of the NC/TN mountains, we made our way to VA where we met up with more of our CVMA 23-3 family for dinner and lodging for the night.  Raven and Sapper have been on the road for over a month while participating in Run for the Wall and now CVMA Nationals.   It was a great dinner of sharing road stories and commiserating over photography challenges.  Suffice it to say that I have become the queen of GoPro camera mounting issues.  Twice (thanks to my ninja-like reflexes!), I have saved my GoPro camera from meeting its demise on asphalt due to mounting issues.  Hopefully I now have the bugs worked out and will have some great photos to show for it!

Tomorrow, we will all roll towards Gettysburg where we will be joined by dozens of other Texas CVMA brothers and sisters as well as hundreds of members from around the country.  Looking forward to more riding and great company.