I used Mapquest and checked my route to Franklin.....and I end up going right down the Tail of the Dragon and south on Route 28 to get to Franklin.......so maybe stopping at Deals Gap for the night will work out and in the morning I can decide if I am going to ride....or continue driving down to Franklin.

I had a good day....the weather was perfect.

The roads I tried today were not as good as what we have around Waynesville.  It seems the east/west roads are in the valleys along the sides of the mountains, and the north/south roads go up and over them - so the next trial will be to use the east/west roads to access the better mountain roads (north/south).  I was headed up Route 60 toward Tellico Plans around 4, and I was going to try and ride the Cherohala and then the Dragon and then go home on 28 - but I figured I was not going to have enough time.  I reset the course for 129 and road it up to Deals Gap, road the Dragon north and then back south, then headed back to Franklin on 28 and got home at 8PM.  I went 287 miles today.

I have never ridden on tar snakes like the ones on 76.  They must be standing up from the surface a bit....and they could be rubbery.....cause when you are leaned over in a curve and hit one (or several)...the bikes wiggles around a lot and I don't get a good feeling from it.  Some wiggles can be ignored - these don't feel like it would be wise to ignore them!

My impression after the first day is that Franklin and MiMountain are an hour or more away from the good riding in GA.  The roads to get there are OK - but it is a lot of mediocre riding to get to where the action is.  Maybe Oldfeller and I can find a spot that is closer to the fun!

Oldfeller.....since you will be here 1-2 PM, I will go on a morning ride if the weather allows, and be back to the campground by 1.  There is supposed to be a strong thunderstorm overnight - but right now I am sitting outside at a Mexican restaurant, and the skies are clear and it is very nice.  I might make a Verslagen inspired "tarp hanging from the cabin" for the motorcycle tonight!

The weather forecast nailed it.......thunderstorms rolled in between 2-3 AM this morning.  It is now 7 AM and the sun is up and it looks like a great day to ride....some PM thunderstorms are forecast.

I pretty much have this place to myself.  There are folks in their campers that must have their own bathrooms - as I have never seen anyone in the bathrooms.  There are no tents set up in any of the camps sites.....just RV's and camping trailers in their semi-permanent spots.

Yep, I am back home again.  

Dave's road and ride synopsis is spot on, there are no amazing Savage roads in the Georgia mountains.  We like to ride at 25-60 mph on a very curvy Savage road and the good Savage roads suit those speeds.

Dave theorizes that the guy who marked up the map for him rides GSXer type machines and he goes very very fast on those Georgia rural roads to make them exciting.   This could be, we saw no Georgia cops down there writing tickets.   We did see a lot of fairly finished looking mountain communities, with very well developed lakes, kinda like the Lake Lure area in NC.

Most of the roads were 3 lane construction, with a passing lane alternating in each direction every 3 miles or so so getting around a slow poke wasn't much of an adventure to us.

There were no great yet cheap cabins in the Franklin/Georgia area either.   There is some cheap stuff, but the cheap stuff is very run down OLD stuff and the good to great stuff is very expensive, much more so than Blue Ridge Motorcycle campground.

I felt comfortable calling the trip a bust as far as finding any new places to stay within the first 9 hours of riding around.  

I characterize the "places to stay" issue like this --- the 1960's and 1970's people who actually built these campgrounds and the cabins and who actually put it all together are mostly dying from old age now.   Only the very rare places like Blue Ridge Motorcycle Campground are really good enough to have been profitable ongoing (and to be sold and and bought again by new blood) in this day and age.

The very very run down very old cabins I stayed in were built 30+ years ago out of rough sawn 2" thick 14" wide pine planks installed vertically that had exterior 4" wide 1" thick strips from the same material nailed over the fit up gaps on the outside.  "Lap and strake construction" is what it was called when I was a kid, and all the corn cribs and farm barns and outbuildings used it.  This cabin construction method had very much in common with those farm buildings, especially the tin roofs and the door construction methods (exact same heavy 2 by 14 construction as found in a barn door).

BTW, Waylah Road is a real gem of a ride, worth searching out all by itself.   It by itself has all the road styles we love so much, multiple mountain up-downs, a stream run and a lakeside run.  It has shaded mountain close twisty woods runs, a national park kayak laden stream run and farmland runs all on the same lengthy road.  

A primo day loop would be stay in Robbinsville, go up to the Dragon on 128 and come back down 28 (alias Fontana Dam Road)  going all the way down to Franklin, then picking up Waylah road to ride back to Robbinsville.    If we were touring a group of newbies, this would be a good  second or third day run after we broke them in good riding the Cherohala Skyway's big sweepers.  

We could wait until we had enough people (6-7) to fill up the BIG DOG at Simple Life Campground to get the BETTER QUALITY OF STAY at a relatively more reasonable price tag (perhaps skipping a year if need be to increase the participation rate).  

Robbinsville is a near optimal location to stay at, really.

My post surgical body report (my other reason for going).   Yes, I can still ride a bike up to the mountains and back again on the same weekend --- but I  have to pay too much in leg based body pain in the doing of it.   But I can still do it.   But only for only a day or so, so please understand there will be no more long iron butt weekends for this old boy.

Bike on a trailer, that's me ......

Compliments to Dave, he rode all the Georgia areas once before I got there and he rode them again after I left.  Nothing got skipped over, so Dave has a complete and honest appraisal of all the northern Georgia roads as recommended to us by his friend.  

To me, the north Georgia roads are sub-par compared to what we normally ride up in NC proper.   The condition of the road surface is poor, with tar snakes everywhere as they are in the slow process of being repaved.  Dave's Kawa 250 hates them tar snakes, you can see him abruptly move over a few inches every time he hits a fresh tar snake while taking a sharp turn.   The Savage isn't nearly as tar snake sensitive, but I got tired of hitting them snakes all the time too.

All in all, a good short trip.  Got good info for trip planning out of it, which is why we went in the first place.

We were supposed to get photos....and I only got 2 (I posted the other photo in the "humor" thread).

This is the Two Wheel Inn located in Suches, GA.  It has camping and cabins and the lodge is open between 12-3 and serves a nice lunch.


The little Ninja 250 did great in the mountains.  I rode 911 miles on it, I averaged 69.3 mpg, and with the 4.6 gallon tank I have a range of 318 miles!  The bike is lacking a bit of torque when you come out of uphill corners....and when riding casually you have to shift down 1-2 gears when you exit the tight corners.....if you are riding aggressively you need to shift down 2-3 gears.  The seat was a bit tiresome.....the seat is sloped forward and I was always up against the fuel tank, and it would help considerably to take just a bit of padding out of the seat to make the top more level.  On the uphill parts of the Cherohala Skyway the bike had no problem holding 60-70 mph.....it just doesn't accelerate very quickly on the steep uphill roads.