A Most excellent Motorbike Vacation - STAR 2011 - Day 6

Day 6 - Thursday, June 30 - 235 miles

Yes Thomas, you can go home again.

" The sun is up,
                                the sky is blue,
                                                                              It's beautiful and so are you......."
                                                 - The Beatles
                                                        "Dear Prudence" -The White Album 

And so it was. Our trip home was fantastic. The day dawned bright and sunny, a perfect day for moto travel. We didn't have far to ride, but Jonny had 800+ miles back to Rhode Island. An easy 2 day trip for Earthdude. We packed up our bikes and took some final pics. Goodbye to other MSTA members with the promise of hooking up at some of the regional events. Then Roo, myself and Jon said our goodbyes - Jon heading north, Roo and I south. Rolling out of the parking lot, we started our journey home. Farewell, Johnson City!

Rhode Island Jonny & author. Elmer gave up on the wabbit.



Jonny and his Honda VFR.
If you can't stuff it in, stack it up!



Roo & Jonny just before take off.

Got a little Captain in you? (not now!)

Of course, as we do on all our motorbike trips, we took the long way home. Scooting down Hwy 321, we bypass Greeneville this time through and continue on to Newport, TN. The stretch of Hwy 321 between Greeneville and Newport is beautiful. The road shape shifts from a secondary 4 lane highway to a blue line 2 laner through some beautiful Tennessee countryside. A nice addition was the appearance of flat land curves that snaps your attention back to the task at hand.

We arrived in Newport, a seemingly quaintish little town. We didn't stop to check it out as we hadn't been on the road that long. Our planned stop for lunch is in Hot Springs, NC. Turning east on Hwy 70, a sign informs us we have 25 miles to go for lunch. Hwy 70 between Newport and Hot Springs is gorgeous! Beautiful scenery and curvy asphalt with nothing in between until you reach town. Rolling into Hot Springs, we park the ST and stroll into Sweet Imaginings Cafe for lunch. Good sandwiches, salads and smoothies - they also offer up coffee drinks and ice cream. Feeling half-human again after lunch, it's now time to put our game faces on. Our chosen route down the mountain is NC Hwy 209 - a super twisty roller coaster thriller that spits on the overdone fame of Hwy 129's Dragon's Tail and puts it's fire out.

We mount up, I swing the beaST around, and down the roller coaster we go! What a blast! I'd forgotten how twisty this road is, but the little gray cells didn't need much coaxing to remember. Mostly 2nd gear curves had the big V-4's exhaust growling as the chicken strips on the Bridgestones got smaller. Roo and I were yelling around curves just like kids on a roller coaster, with Roo waving her arms around! How appropriate going through the small communities of Luck and Trust (yes, they are real towns!) - luck in that we didn't jitterbug on any of the gravel in the curves, and trust in the Bridgestone company's R&D team. All too soon we arrived in Waynesville, NC with it's myriad of traffic congestion and pedestrians. Crawling our way through, we hooked up with Hwy 276 south. Up and over Cold mountain, we descend into the quaintness of, and, one of our favorite mountain towns, Brevard, NC. 



Johnny Cash sang "I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere....."
We don't have the travel resume of the great Man in Black,
but we're working on it!

By this time, Roo was ready to be home. "Don't stop." she said. "Let's keep going." So we did. Over to Caesars Head, then down the mountain one last time into the searing heat of South Carolina. Back on home turf, we had nothing but smooth, open road between us and home. In no time we were rolling down our street and into our driveway, shutting the beaST down for the final time on this trip. Roo and I dismount, and as is our tradition after a two-up moto trip, hug and high-five each other, congratulating ourselves on yet another fantastic, successful moto trip together. Roo quickly sheds her riding gear and jumps in the car to pickup the rest of our family, Gretchen & Duncan, our two Beagles, from the kennel. While she is gone, I unpack and stow our gear, and give the ST a well deserved bath. A mere 20 minutes later, Roo was back with the quadripeds, and the four of us jumped and rolled around in the grass, all happy to be together again.




Gretchen (white), Roo, & Duncan (trying to hide)

Duncan: "anybody got water?"



Now that's a happy pack!

So you see Thomas**, you really can go home again.


**Thomas Wolfe, (1900-1938) famous Asheville, NC novelist
     Reference made to notable work: "You can't go home again"
     Published posthumously 1940




Yeah. That about sums it up.
Life is good, especially on a motorbike!

END

THANKS FOR READING!