Tail of the Dragon

After driving the Blue Ridge Parkway I spent the next day driving the Cherohala Skyway and U.S. 129 at Deal's Gap, aka the Tail of the Dragon. It's 318 turns in 11 miles of complete fun.

Calderwood Dam.

A cool guy from Georgia in a Subaru WRX I was chasing through the corners.

Wearing yellow was a mistake, I had a huge bumblebee chasing me around when I got out of the car.

Cheoah Dam where they filmed The Fugitive.

Killboy's S2000.

The drive from the Cheoah River up to Deal's Gap.

Deal's Gap to the Tenn state line where the Dragon starts.

Blue Ridge Parkway

The second and third days of the trip were driving the entire, almost 500 mile, length of the Blue Ridge parkway from north to south.

The parkway starts in Virginia and ends up in North Carolina.

Otter Lake.

Mabry Mill. The drive is beautiful and every few miles is a scenic overlook or something else interesting to stop and see.

The Honda still looking pretty clean, minus the 1000 or so bugs smashed on the front bumper.

Lots of bikers out riding, the weather was perfect.

Upper Linville Falls.

The view of Linville falls looking down.

The Chimney view overlook.

Looking Glass Rock.

 

Once you hit North Carolina the mountains seem more rugged, the road curvier, and lots more tunnels.

Shenandoah National Park

After getting home from Milwaukee I spent a day unpacking, repacking, and washing the car, then left for another road trip. Day 1 was driving from Michigan to northern Virginia. The last 3 hours were a wonderful drive on the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. Top down, music up, perfect curvy roads in the mountains. The hard part was trying to keep anywhere near the speed limit.

There was almost no traffic and only a few people. Every couple of miles there was a scenic overlook with another great view. I stopped at the first couple then would slow down, think "hmm, beautiful view but same as the last 100" and keep driving.

I loved the views, the layered look of mountain ridge after mountain ridge. They never look as beautiful in photos as they do in person.

The road mostly runs along the top of the mountain ridge. There a few tunnels in the northern part, many more when you get further south on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, but that's tomorrow and the next day.

I was lucky with the weather, a little sun, a few clouds, and only a few raindrops on a day 2.

65

 This is from day 2, on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but it's very similar to the Skyline, mostly curves, running along the top of the ridge or through the forest.

Milwaukee IndyFest

The Indycar Milwaukee Mile race asked the S2000 club if they were interested in doing the parade lap of drivers before the race so a bunch of us volunteered. We drove up a couple of days early and did some sightseeing.

Milwaukee Art Museum.

We spent part of the day relaxing in one of the parks on Lake Michigan.

Once we picked up our tickets and pit passes we watched the volleyball tournament they were having as part of IndyFest.

Then watched practice for a while. I spent the time practicing my panning technique. I need lots more practice, this was one of the few shots that wasn't completely blurry.

Sunday we lined up outside the track, this is about half the S2000's that showed up.

We had just about every year and color S2k that were built, including a couple of CR (club racer) models.

This is what it should have looked like driving around the track but I made the mistake of getting stuck at the end of the line and there were more cars than Indy drivers so I drove around track without a driver, but still had fun. Next time I'll make sure to be at the front of the line!

Seems like every car had at least 1 GoPro, if not more.

The race was the last part of the weekend.

This is about how I felt by the end of the weekend, TIRED!