What is with places that do breakfast near where I am staying not being open... Once again the place I scouted before wasn't open when it was supposed to be. Checked in tonight to a place with breakfast to avoid that problem.
The last section of the blue ridge parkway was even better then the first 300 miles. Reached the +5000 elevation mark, and broke through the fog. Jumped off the parkway at asheville for lunch. Made a beeline to Deal's Gap to ride the Tail of the Dragon. Probably the craziest road to drive in all the US. I think what makes it so different is first, the extremely high number of turns in such quick succession, and second that the roads have a crazy camber to them. For a waterloo reference, its like if you took that one turn at Hawksville and repeated it +300 times in a row in the span of only 11 miles, on the side of mountain, through a forest. It was very much what I imagine riding on the tail of a real dragon would be like. Or kinda like doing a waterslide or rollercoaster on a motorcycle. Its also a fairly narrow road, with zero shoulder. The church nearby welcomes "dragon-slayers" which looked funny on a church sign.
I definitely didn't set any records, but I rode through a couple times and really enjoyed it. I bet local riders who know the place well can fly through the turns, but since you can't see more then one turn at a time I had to take pretty slow. It was about a 2 hour detour from my direction travel but totally worth it. Tomorrow its back towards the coast.