Nancy and I drove the "Tail" last summer and are heading back to drive it a couple of times on our way to Charlotte in April.
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DRIVE VACATIONS
TheStar.com - Travel - Twisting the Tail of the Dragon
Twisting the Tail of the Dragon
On the map, Route 129 looks like a major highway but the reality is gut-wrenchingly different
Mar 08, 2007
Mark Richardson
Toronto Star
ATLANTA–My wife really should have known better.
Somewhere north of Knoxville, on the drive down I-75 toward Florida, I asked the question that had been percolating for hours.
"This is pretty boring on this interstate. We should branch out on the scenic route. I know the road – it'll only take an extra hour, and shave some distance ..."
She shrugged. She was bored, too. Sure, she said, but wanted to see it on the map.
That's okay, because for some strange reason Route 129 through Tennessee and into western North Carolina looks like a pretty major highway. There are some squiggles and wiggles, but nothing to be concerned about.
"I've taken it before," I assured her. "It's a nice change over the Appalachians."
That should have been her first clue. Check it out for yourself and it seems to make a lot of sense. Staying on the interminable I-75 from Knoxville to Atlanta is about 350 kilometres, but that takes you through Chattanooga which is about 100 kilometres west of the straight line down. The interstate makes you drive two sides of a triangle to avoid the mountains.
My idea was to leave the interstate at Knoxville and take a route more directly south: Hwy. 129 all the way through to North Carolina, then Hwy. 19 down into Georgia, before joining the interstate again at Atlanta.
I even had the printout from Microsoft Streets & Trips to show it was only 10 kilometres longer and would take just an extra hour. That should have been the second clue – that I'd been planning this in advance.
The truth is that there are drivers of sports cars and riders of motorcycles who plan entire vacations around this route. There are websites devoted to it, and videos on YouTube of the road taken with on-board cameras. Hwy. 129 has more than 300 curves in its 18 kilometres and is known as the Tail of the Dragon. And that's only the start of it.
"Sure – it'll be a nice break," she said, and I swung the minivan off the interstate and onto the two-laner. The kids in the back were watching a movie and hardly noticed.
The road through Marysville, just south of Knoxville, is wide and suburban, and the land opens to small farms once the strip malls end. Traffic thins, too. There's only one sign as the mountains approach that states that there are switchback curves ahead and trucks should "consider alternate route."
My 7-year-old son had complained of an upset stomach earlier so I'd quickly suggested some Children's Gravol to help; when his 10-year-old brother looked envious, he was given a generous spoonful, too. When we passed the sign, I flipped up the movie screen so the kids could appreciate the scenery through the window.
Somewhere past the flooded Chilhowee Lake on our right, just across the bridge over Tabcat Creek, the road climbs up into the Smoky Mountains and the Dragon begins. The asphalt is smoothly paved and well cambered, wriggling along the old trade route through the hills. The road drops away on the left and then the right and there's little to stop the minivan if it should leave the road.
"This is pretty," said my wife.
The road twists some more, and then turns around on itself and squirms back and forth through the forest, unrelenting. The curves are graded for 20 and 30 km/h. I sawed the wheel of the minivan back and forth, not too fast, not too slow, and the boys called "Whoo-hoo!" and "Yeah!" in the back. My wife held onto the passenger grab handle and squinted at me as she realized her naiveté in agreeing to the route.
Follow an official map of the Dragon (www.tailofthedragon.com/maps_dragon_road.html) and you'll see the names of the best switchbacks and we drove them all: Triple Apex Corner, Brake or Bust Bend, Gravity Cavity. We had no choice – there's no crossroad and the only option was to turn back. The boys' calls changed to "ooohhh" and "urrgh!" and I opened the rear windows and slowed down a bit. The road has a 50 km/h speed limit and it's tough to exceed it in a minivan.
Eventually, the Dragon ends officially at Deal's Gap on the state line and we paused the van underneath the Tree of Shame at the motorcyclist's motel there. It's littered with plastic pieces of motorcycle and every shard attests to a calamity of some sort.
You can see one at youtube.com, search for "Harley deals gap.'' Or if you want to see how the road is ridden properly, my favourite video is at http://moto.cled17.com/46.
Light snow began to fall. As we paused, a police cruiser drove past and up the road we'd just travelled. It was the first vehicle we'd seen on the Dragon and at this time of year the road is scarcely travelled and susceptible to small accumulations of snow. In spring, summer and fall, when the weather's warm enough to drop the top, the road is often packed with cruising traffic.
Just south of the state line, the road drops down to cross the water at the base of Cheoah Dam, made famous as the dam from which Harrison Ford's character jumped in the 1993 movie The Fugitive. We paused again and looked at the clock on the dash – didn't seem too bad.
We stayed south, through Robbinsville where every second storefront seemed to cater to motorcyclists, and on down to the straighter, faster asphalt of Hwy. 19. If we'd just wanted to make up time, we could have stayed heading southwest across the ridge through the Nantahala and Chattahoochee National Forests and driven comfortably into Atlanta, but the family seemed settled so I turned south-east on Hwy. 19.
After a while, the road began twisting again as it climbed back up into the mountains, which are the highest in Georgia. The road was as winding but never so narrow as the Dragon and the tightest and steepest sections included an overtaking lane, but the elevation was evident by the snow and ice beside the road.
At the highest point of about 1,000 metres, crossing Blood Mountain at Neels Gap, I paused for a photograph of the icicles in the rocks beside the road. "Why do you need a picture, Dad?" called a tired voice from the back of the van. "We have ice like this back in Canada. We're supposed to be driving away from it."
My wife looked at the dash clock and then at me, with that fixed gaze that says "enough already."
I guess the side road through to Helen, Georgia, along the Richard Russell Scenic Highway, Route 348, which crosses the Appalachian Trail and rises and drops more than 500 metres, was off the agenda.
We pulled into Atlanta 6 1/2 hours after leaving Knoxville, but that included an hour's stop for lunch along the way. So really, it took an extra two hours or so from over the freeway.
If we'd stayed on the Interstate, we'd arrive in Florida two hours earlier, the drive would have been forgettable and the kids would have watched one more DVD.
Instead, we drove right through the Appalachian Mountains and not around them, and saw vistas and scenery that we'll remember long after we return home.
But if you want to branch off for this detour, don't forget to pack the Gravol.
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Mark Richardson is the Star's Wheels editor.
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