Blue Ridge Parkway – July 2009

Me, Lisa as my passenger, my roommate on his FJR, and a buddy and his wife on his Harley Davidson all set out on Friday evening for a three day road trip. Our planned route was to ride up to Fletcher, NC to stay the night, ride a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Smokey Mountain Parkway, and then take the Smokey Mountain Parkway to Pigeon Forge to stay the evening in a cabin. We would return on Sunday, stopping at the Dillard House for lunch.

We set off at about 5pm on Friday. My roommate and I wanted to test out his J&M CB setup and my GL1800 CB setup while on this trip, and long story short, it worked very well. I was pleased, as was he, and now we are trying to get our buddy to get one for his bike as well. It really came in handy.

This is our buddy and his wife cruising along the interstate with us. Apparently, as my girlfriend was taking this picture, the wind caught her shirt and started to lift it up. There was a white truck coming up on us that you can’t see in this shot, and the going theory was that he was watching her and not paying attention when he almost merged on top of us. Ungh… I really wish people would pay more attention to driving!

The views became more and more amazing as we got deeper and deeper into the mountains. It was an amazing experience.

Here we are about to enter one of the many tunnels on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The first tunnel I entered was dark… darker than I expected, and that really caught me off guard. Once I made it out the other side, I knew what to expect next time so it wasn’t so shocking.

We caught up with a group of about 10 Goldwing riders on the parkway. I never got a chance to stop and say hello, but we were behind them for several miles.

Here we are riding the Smokey Mountain Parkway, equally as beautiful as the Blue Ridge Parkway. My only complaint was that the Smokey Mountain Parkway was much more crowded than the Blue Ridge, so in the future, I might just stick to the Blue Ridge (and maybe go from end to end one day).

And finally, we arrived at the Cabin in Pigeon Forge. All in all, it was a blast, and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to take a multi-day trip. And as a result, I can now log down Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee as visited on my motorcycle!