Yesterday, Day 8, we woke up to cold weather and wet ground on the “overload” section of the Honey Bear Campgrounds. Today we woke up in this beautiful cottage and to the sound of the river that runs by it… check this out

The cottage is spacious, clean and very luxurious. It has a jacuzzi, hot tub, a deck that wraps around the side and back of the cottage, a fire pit and everything that you can have at home: washer, dryer, dishwasher, coffee grinder and coffee maker, satellite TV, etc…but it does not have internet and no cellphone reception as it is deep in the middle of no where 🙂

It is a bit too much for the two of us, but we are enjoying every minute of it.This is the view from the master bedroom…

… here is the kitchen…we are making breakfast…

Getting ready to leave…To Deal’s Gap.

Today we reached the destination of our Trip, “Deal’s Gap” on route US-129, it is known as the Tail of the Dragon (for those of you that do not ride). Tail of the Dragon is a tourist route that has 318 curves in 11 miles (18 Km) that crosses North Caroline and Tennessee.

Tail of the Dragon’s ride

Photos with the local dragons…

Today was a crazy day, we rode 386 kilometers as follows:  from the cottage (Bryson) to Fontana Dam to Tail of the Dragon… one time going north ( Mehrdad riding), a second time going south (Patricia riding) and a third time going north (Mehrdad riding again).

From there we aimed to ride the Cherohala Skyway but we took a wrong turn and drove the back country of Tennessee.

We made it home at around 8:00 pm and we were both exhausted. Section of the routes were very beautiful others not so much.  We do not have many photos from today’s ride because we decided to take a video of the Tail’s ride but we forgot to bring the second charger of the camera which was in vain since the video is all shaky.

In conclusion, the 318 curves are nice but we both feel that it is a onetime thing, just to say we have been there. There were sections of other roads that were as beautiful, much less traffic, higher speed limit and interesting to ride like the last section of the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville to Cherokee.