Day 4 - June 15

Before I tell you about our day, allow me to share with you the Southern Word for the Day (SWD). You will recall that yesterday's word was "bald", as in: Mmm, Mmm, Mmmm that bald egg sure was good. Today's word is "moll", as in: He always goes the extra moll in everything he does. So, for pactice, here are both words in a sentence... I would go 100 molls in order to get a mess of those bald snap beans with some bacon drippin's.

Well, enough of that, I'll give you a short account of our day before calling it quits.... it's been a long day.

Jack met us at the motel at 8:00 and we headed off on some of the roads surrounding Christiansburg. There is some great riding to be had in this area. In fact, I would say that at least one of these roads was comparable to the Tail of the Dragon. Along the way we stopped for breakfast at Tuggle's Restaurant just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is a well known spot particularly among the motorcycling community. Following breakfast we continued to ride a loop to the next entrance to the Parkway; again on some really attractive roads. Here, Jack left us to return home while Charlie and I continued on our way. By the way, the second picture above shows Jack and I in front of Tuggle's Restaurant.

We traveled the Parkway south until the GPS told us to get off. This seemed reasonable because we needed to head a bit west at one time or another. Unfortunately it also returned us to the Blue Ridge Parkway after wasting an hour of our time riding through high population areas and countless traffic lights in the area of Grandpa Mountain. We again headed south on the parkway, but at a maximum of 45 mph, that time lost could not be made up.

Along the way we came across another rider who said that stopping to ride up Mt. Mitchel was a "must" and not to be missed. This is the highest point east of the Rocky Mounts with an elevation of 6584 ft. We did ride to the top, but the experience paled in comparison to riding up Mt. Washington in NH even though it is a couple hundred feet shorter. The first picture above shows Charlie sitting on his bike in the parking lot of the Mt. Mitchel State Park parking lot.

After waiting at a stop for road construction, we began the final part of our day riding into Ashville, SC. Sadly this part of the ride was in some pretty serious rain. We ended up at a Best Western, in Ashville, where I write this.