We rolled out of Tucson on Sunday morning and took our usual northern route out of Arizona which is scenic. However we did try some variations to the route as we wanted to stop in NC at Art's mom's.. The drive went well. I am starting to get the hang of the long road trips. Every time we stop, we stand and walk, whether walking circles around the truck while fueling or eating salad standing up. We had decent weather as well. We took 3 days to get to western NC where Art's mom and sister live. Letting the gps figure out our route on day 3, we had an interesting accidental routing. Some traffic recalculated us onto to US 129 in Tennessee which was just some random twisty looking road along a river on the map.
So we were driving along this beautiful road behind a mini and a FL plate SUV. There were some weird warning signs for dangerous motorcycle road ahead. Then the FL plate pulled off and the mini took off. The road was so twisty that we could barely drive 20 MPH. Pull outs every 50 feet, and Art started pulling off to let motorcycles and mini's by. I could no longer check my phone to see where the route was taking us as the tossing back in forth in the truck was making me nauseous. This went on for 20 miles. There were photographers posted on turns taking pictures. It seemed crazy! Apparently this road is a local legend called the dragons tail. It added some time to our day, but was well worth the adventure.
For the past 4 years, it has rained every time we visit NC. I assumed we would not get to ride, but luck was on our side and the sun came out Thursday morning as we were headed back to NJ, so we stopped at Dupont State Forest for a short ride, which was awesome! Always better to break up the drive with riding. It is good for both the mind and body. I was quickly reacquainted with humidity and felt sweat dripping down my head for the first time in 6 months.
Although it was somewhat dreary today, it was good to be back and ride Ringwood. I hope things dry out enough to get up to Sterling soon, but I hear it has been wet up there. I could probably use a rainy day to put my house back together, but as soon as the weather is good, we will be jumping right into our trail building projects. ... Let the trail building begin!