It’s funny how closely one follows weather forecasts when a motorcycle ride is in the not-so-distant future. Meteorological predictions that would draw a casual yawn from a group traveling by RV, or mini van, or even Mini Cooper, can take motorcyclists on an emotional rollercoaster ride that Disneyland couldn’t rival. This July was no different as 6 other riders and I prepared for an ambitious tour of the North Carolina mountains.
Ten days out from this ride, when really only God knows how hot or wet it might be outside, accuweather.com assured us of a partly cloudy, warm, but especially dry weekend for Western NC: perfect conditions for such a trip. By the eve of our departure, a fifty percent chance of showers and thunderstorms was what we were to expect, and cautious optimism (which is very helpful when motoring miles from home on two wheels) prevailed in last minute phone calls among the group members that evening.
The Western half of North Carolina offers some of the state’s most strikingly beautiful scenery, and is consequently perhaps the most heavily visited part of the state. Picturesque mountain views, funky towns, and winding two-lane roads that are very compelling when viewed through the windshield of a 1986 Accord hatchback can be experienced in a way that is indescribably breathtaking while sitting on a motorbike. A passenger of mine once put it best: “It’s like you’re really in the mountains, flying through the wind and the trees. This same trip in a car would seem like just watching it on TV.”
The goal of our ride was simple, even if a little ambitious in terms of distance: to cover a wide swath of the southern Appalachian mountain range that would reach as far south as Asheville, and as far north as Boone, encompassing just over 400 miles from start to finish. Having gratefully arranged a night of complimentary lodging on Beech Mountain, we were able to break up the 400-plus miles of riding with a good night’s rest. Best of all, Ryan Somner, Uptown Magazine’s staff photographer, got the green light from the editor to come along (via Jeep) and document the adventure. Along the way, we would experience crystal clear lakes, unbelievable mountain vistas and several pitchers of beer. We didn’t know it, but we’d have a rider who wouldn’t make it past Gastonia, and a rider who almost wouldn’t make it home at all. We’d see historic landmarks, and eat amazing organic breakfasts. We’d cover unexpected additional distances. In the end, we’d all be better riders and even better friends, and it would all be documented in high-resolution digital images by one of the Charlotte’s most talented shooters.
At 8 am on Saturday morning, though, it seemed as if our collective cautiously optimistic hopes for sunny, warm skies had been in vain. The sky was a misty swirling blanket of gray mist. The visibility was so low it was hard see the top of a telephone pole. A glance to the west made me think twice about how accessible my rain gear was.
Plaza Midwood’s Common Market was our early morning rendezvous point for this ‘rain or shine’ endeavor, and by 8:15 the convoy of three BMW’s, two Ducati’s, a Harley, and a Kawasaki, followed by one Jeep, was merging onto I-85 South.
The first (intended) stop on our circuit would be Lake Lure, a worthy destination in itself. The lake is pristine and an easy 90-mile ride from Charlotte, typically about an hour and a half away. According to my calculations this would put us there just in time for a late morning Bloody Mary.
The creation of Lake Lure as a resort area adjacent to Chimney Rock became the mission of Dr. Lucius B. Moore at the turn of the 20th century. It wasn’t until 1927 that the Rocky Broad River was dammed at Tumbling Shoals and Dr. Moore’s wife Elizabeth bestowed the name Lake Lure on the 720 acres of clear mountain water with over 27 miles of shoreline. Today Lake Lure is a popular destination for tattooed bikers clad in leather and Myers Park bluebloods traveling via Range Rover. The year-round population is just over 1000 and the average July temperature is only 74 degrees.
Fortunately, just 20 minutes into a warming July sun burned off the gloomy mist hanging over us our journey, and big friendly-looking cumulus clouds began to jockey for position high in the deep blue morning sky. Unfortunately, it was at about this time that we suffered our first casualty of the trip. The Kawasaki of rider Lee Lally experienced a mechanical failure that, despite our best efforts at roadside repair, would have to be towed back to town.
Even with this early delay in the trip, we arrived at Lake Lure well before lunchtime but late enough to (legally) have that Bloody Mary I’d been thinking about all morning. Once all safely parked at the motorcycle-friendly Geneva Riverside Motel, which is little more than a stone’s throw from the mouth of the lake, we walked around back to the motor inn’s well known Tiki Bar, where a crowd of morning patrons had an obvious head start on us.
It was at this point, while everyone else was laughing and jostling to place their orders with the bartender, that I became a little nervous. You see, I enjoy riding with my helmet visor up whenever possible, getting the most out of the sensory overload that comes with mountain air rushing onto your face. Sometimes more than air hits your face, though, like rocks thrown from the tires of big trucks, for example, and sometimes even things that sting you, like wasps.
While riding the perimeter of the lake, with visor up as usual, an angry wasp avenged countless winged brethren who had met their fate on my windshield, and delivered a painful payload of his venom into the very tip of my nose.
And I’m very allergic to bee stings.
I had conveniently forgotten to bring my EpiPen, the adrenaline shot that can save my life in situations like this. The one that mom says I should never be without. By the time I made it to the bar with the others, the swelling had spread from my nose up below both eyes, and comments like “dude, you look like a Klingon from Star Trek II the wrath of Khan” and “you look worse than Rocky Balboa in the tenth round” were jokingly uttered by my fellow riders. In lieu of seeking proper medical attention, I chose to medicate with plenty of tomato juice and vodka, with some Patron Silver for good measure.
I was still able to breathe and had only moderately diminished use of my sight, so it was off to Asheville for lunch. Western NC’s gem has so much to offer that it almost seemed like a shame to just stop in for a quick midday meal. The city has rich architectural heritage and on a stroll through downtown one can see a mix of Art Deco, beaux-arts, and neoclassical styles. There’s an edgy energy buzzing around the locally owned shops, galleries, and music venues that is impossible to miss. There’s way too much to list here, but some of the most popular reasons folks come here are the luxurious Grove Park Inn, the annual Bele Chere music festival, and Asheville’s close proximity to the magnificent Biltmore Estate.
The popular Flying Frog restaurant, which offers ”fine continental, German and Indian cuisine with boutique wines from around the world in an elegant atmosphere” is right smack in the middle of downtown and was able to accommodate our group for lunch. Due to a concoction of potent wasp venom and alcohol, my account of lunch is a bit hazy. I do remember that the sidewalk tables provided an excellent view of the hustle and bustle of the city, and I practically inhaled my Reuben sandwich. And if memory serves me, The Flying Frog’s Bloody Marys may have just edged out those of the Geneva Motel’s Tiki Bar.
Having many more miles to cover before reaching our digs on Beech Mountain, though, we paid our tab and headed straight for the legendary Blue Ridge Parkway, easily accessed just a few miles from The Flying Frog Café.
The monumental parkway, whose construction was authorized as a public works project during the Depression-era 1930’s, was more than a half-century in the making. “America’s favorite drive” winds its way 469 miles north from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. It winds through mountain meadows and forests, and offers seemingly endless views of distant mountain ranges and valleys. Not surprisingly, it is an extremely popular way to explore the area, and is not to be missed. The Blue Ridge Parkway’s twists and turns are especially popular with motorcyclists, and in the summer bikes seem to outnumber cars. Our group of experienced riders spent the early afternoon leaning hard into shady, sweeping turns and accelerating out of them one by one in a fluid row for miles and miles. There was plenty of sun and cool mountain air to go around. And time really does seem to go by at a different pace on this impeccably maintained, majestic two-lane road.
On a stop for fuel late in the afternoon, I learned that my facial swelling now looked less like a badly beaten boxer, and more like cosmetic surgery performed by a hack doctor. Outstanding!
One thing to consider carefully when planning a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway is the fact that entire sections can, and will, be closed at various times throughout the year. It’s best to check the parkway’s website in advance for any closures, especially during the colder months. Our intent had been to ride the Parkway for many miles, from Asheville all the way up to the Banner Elk area, where Beech Mountain is located. An unexpected (especially for July) closure of a section of the parkway forced us onto another, lengthier route through eastern Tennessee.
Don’t get me wrong, Johnson City, TN seemed like a fine place. If you find yourself in the area, be sure to catch a movie at the dated, but apparently still operating drive-in movie theater. (They still have those?)
Traveling by motorcycle is more physically demanding than driving in a car. A much higher level of constant alertness, dehydration, sun exposure, back and shoulder wear, even—er—chafing of one’s undercarriage, can make a 250-mile trip tough on the body. It was just an hour before dark that 6 bikes and one Jeep crossed back into NC and made their way through Banner Elk and up to the top of Beech Mountain for the night. I know, based on the looks of relief from my counterparts, that everyone was happy to be out of the saddle and sitting on the deck of a gracious 3-story vacation home looking at twinkling lights on quickly fading silhouettes of distant mountain ranges to the north.
After much beer and pizza and animated re-hashing of the day’s trials and tribulations, no one had any trouble getting a good night’s sleep. [Even those of us who were stung in the face, yet weren’t afforded the luxury of a bed, and passed out faced down on a Persian rug in the living room. Not that anyone would be bitter about that or anything.]
Sunday morning brought more sunny skies and a steady mountain breeze that you’ll find only above 3500 feet…and a surprising number of early risers. A few cups of startlingly good coffee from a 1970’s-era Mr. Coffee maker, and riding gear was being donned and engines fired up for round two.
Fortunately, the section of the Blue Ridge Parkway between Banner Elk and Highway 321 was open. This is perhaps one of the most scenic segments of a road that is famous for being scenic, and includes the often photographed viaducts. With steady prodding from my photographer to get on the road while “the light is still good,” eventually we all wound our way north through some of the best combinations of hairpin and sweeping turns of the entire trip, riding in and out of tree-canopy shaded and sun-splashed stretches of road.
Boone, home of Appalachian State University was our destination for a late breakfast, and is only a ten-mile ride from the parkway north on 321. Tupelo’s World Café, right on the main drag downtown, had ample seating on the covered deck for our now boisterous gang, and had just enough room to park all of the bikes out front, within sight of the table. Having spent some 4 years in Boone as a student at ASU, I wasn’t a bit surprised to see things like organic turkey bacon and various tempeh selections on the menu. No one seemed to jump for the tofu scramble, though, and I mainly saw plates of biscuits & gravy and scrambled eggs with real pork bacon quickly disappear.
A stroll down King Street took us past the noteworthy Mast General Store. Today mostly a tourist attraction, the nineteenth-century mercantile once boasted carrying every item a customer might need in life, from “the cradle to the grave.”
Murphy’s Tavern, a place in which I’ve personally spent more time and money than I’d care to admit, was the final stop on our whirlwind, 30-hour tour of Western North Carolina. Murphy’s is a great place for a pitcher of good beer and home fries drenched in ranch dressing and melted cheddar cheese. They also have the best covered outdoor seating in town.
As our pitchers dwindled and calls were made to wives, assuring them of a timely return home for some late afternoon yard work, I knew the time had come for the city dwellers to head back down the mountain. By 2 pm we all were riding down highway 421 as a group out of Boone, gradually making our way back to the Queen City at a good pace. The temperature spiked noticeably as we descended down into the Piedmont.
As we merged onto I-77 South for the final leg of the journey, an unnamed and slightly reckless member of the group (ok, it was Tom) adopted a maniacal pace, incorporating triple-digit speeds and traffic weaving on a record-setting stint down I-77 into Charlotte. I have to be honest, though, I loved every minute of it. It wasn’t long before the riders in the group began to spread out, and I found myself hoping for two things.
The first was that I would make it home alive.
The second was that Charlotteans would read this tale and be inspired to explore what the western part of our state has to offer. Whether you do it on a bicycle or in an RV really doesn’t matter. The point is that there’s so much to see that is so close to our city: find a way to get there and experience it for yourself.
RESOURCES
Lake Lure
www.townoflakelure.com
Geneva Riverside Lodging
828.625.4121
www.genevarivermotel.com
Asheville
www.exploreasheville.com
Flying Frog Café
828.254.9411
www.flyingfrogcafe.com
Blue Ridge Parkway
www.blueridgeparkway.org
Boone
Tupelo’s World Café
828.262.5000
www.tupelosworldcafe.com
Murphy’s Tavern
828.264.5117
~ Matt Kokenes
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