Day 6 – North Carolina
We survived our first night in the boonies and woke up with the birds.
Russ got straight back to fire duty.
We take in more forest today as we wind our way west across North Carolina.
The trail takes us past Mountain Crossing Mercantile, a kind of General Store and Diner run by cool outdoor types /hill billy’s .
We were early and had to wait a while for the kitchen to fire-up so drank some coffee before opting for “The Hawks Bill” – 2 Eggs, Double Bacon, Gritts, Hash browns and Toast.
It came with ‘Biscuits and Gravy’ too for some reason. Biscuits are like salty scones and gravy is like white sauce. It tastes better than it sounds.
We’d noticed that getting a good breakfast was harder than we expected. More often than not, what we imagined we’d get on reading the menu was disappointing in real life.
We also learnt that it is impossible to gauge the quality of the food from the appearance of the establishment.
This breakfast wasn’t too bad, but we’ll revisit the breakfast experience as the trip progresses.
Russ wearing his Dyfed Dirt Bike Club shirt back to front again.
The route took us along sections of Blue Ridge Parkway
https://www.blueridgeparkway.org/ a famous scenic drive with lots of places to stop and take in the views. These are called Overlooks.
The TAT criss-crosses the Parkway utilising forest roads where possible and re-joining the tarmac for sections before taking another offshoot.
We reached one of these turns to find the barrier closed. There was no road closed sign and it was easy to ride around the gate.
So we decided to continue and find out why the road was closed.
Here’s what happened (apologies in advance for the low-res video).
We made it out the other end.
And continued through postcard America.
We took in an optional section called Hurricane Creek Road which was tougher than the standard route and great fun, before looping back on ourselves to reach
Rocky Bluff Campground
It rained quite heavily in the afternoon and were were soaked so we didn’t manage many pictures.
The best days' riding so far and another 213 miles on the clock.