The Dragon and other curvy roads

When I lived in Maryville, I had a nice little Suzuki GS400 that I tooled around on. This is the one vehicle I have no pictures of. But I have many fond memories of riding the Parkway, the Dragon and many of the other curvy roads in the area. I also did some hiking in the Smokies but looking back on it, it seems like I didn't do enough. Living there, work got in the way and so did life as it always does. So now we're back and I took Becky and Patrick over the Parkway and over Deal's Gap. Driving the Tahoe wasn't like riding the bike and there were bikes and cars out in force on the famous road.   

Deal's Gap, or the Dragon is officially State Route 129. But the Dragon covers eleven miles of 129 and contains 318 curves.

http://minisonthedragon.com/images/drgaon_map.jpg

 

 

 

 

Becky, Iris and I in front of the Dragon at Deal's Gap Resort.

These are all parts, pieces, clothes, helmets of riders and bikes that wrecked on the Dragon.

Overlook on the Foothills Parkway

At a pull off on 129

Don't want to go off here! All of the Dragon is straight up one side and straight down the other.

Pics of Fontana Dam built in 1942 to provide electricity to Alcoa Aluminum plant for the production of aluminum for airplanes. The dam took only three years to build and is part of the TVA system. It is also part of the Appalachian Trail.

 4/10 Friday Becky woke up to the fridge making funny noises and I slept right through while she trouble shot the problem. She counldn't figure out what was wrong and gave up and went to bed. Then the CO2 detector started to beep and she had to figure out how to unhook that. All the windows were open and the propane wasn't on so noone was in danger. In the morning, we discovered that the battery had given up the ghost. 

Patrick and I drove down to Maryville and bought a new battery. I found the site of the old Alcoa Good Times building, its now a Cracker Barrel, and then I drove by my old apartment building. It was still there. 

The new battery fixed the problems with the fridge and we were extremely happy not to have to worry about repairing the fridge. 

I snapped this on the way into the park. The cell phone camera was fuzzy in the rain.

We drove out to a paved path to a waterfall but paved didn't equal accessible and we stopped after .2 of a mile and called it quits. It was very steep and the trail was 1.3 miles long. I wasn't sure if we could have made it back if we had gotten there. We drove back to Cades Cove and went around the eleven mile loop. 

Patrick wanted to take this dam picture of the diverter dam that fed the waterwheel.

Two bear cubs wrestle for us. The cars were stopped and pulled over all along the road to get a glimpse of the bears. This sighting brought the total to five bears for the day.

Mama Bear took a nap

This little set of falls is between Townsend and 441. 

This sign gave us a chuckle in Cades Cove.