Adventure Riding in the Smokies

A great day of scramblin’! Met up with 3 other riders in Townsend, TN, to take on tourist drivers, primitive dirt and twisty paved roads, all tied together by the beauty of the Smoky Mountain National Park and surrounding National Forests. Several 2-wheel manufacturers represented, Triumph (Brutus the Scrambler), Royal Enfield Himalayan, Harley Pan America, and Honda Transalp. All the bikes did great at everything we through at them.

Cades Cove was a bloody mess, but it was not surprising. The one-way, one-lane, 11-mile loop road is meant so that visitors can slow roll and checkout the scenery and the wildlife. Going only about halfway around the loop took us quite a while. Thanks to a few stops to see bears, we were able to negotiate through the cars and make it to the backside of the cove where we picked up Parsons Branch Primitive Rd.

Parsons Branch had too many concrete fords for me to count accurately. Thankfully the branch was fairly low at most the crossings. It is a great road for beginning ADV riders, if they can stand the slow moving traffic for 5-6 miles to get there. We should’ve started about an hour earlier at around 7am when Cades Cove normally opens to moto traffic. Note on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the road opens later, 10am I think, to allow bicycles to have some alone time on the loop.

Parsons Branch is a one-way dirt road that takes you to US129, affectionately known as the Tail of the Dragon, about half way along the track. We turned south on 129 into North Carolina until we reached Joyce Kilmer, which would take us around a beautiful little lake to a forest road that parallels the Cherohala Skyway, referred to by locals as the Gravel-hala Skyway. We would only do about half of that route before turning back towards Tennessee to ride half of the paved skyway. We ran right into a storm cell that opened on Deal’s Gap and the surrounding area. We were able to dive into Tapoco Lodge’s covered motorcycle parking to let the worst of it pass. When we got back to the Tennessee and passed the Dragon, the roads were perfectly dry.

00:00 Introduction
01:53 Pigeon Forge and Wears Valley
03:11 Group Meetup in Townsend
03:43 Cades Cove
07:48 Parson’s Branch Primitive Road
11:48 Tail of the Dragon and beyond
13:48 Gravel-hala Skyway
15:21 Cherohala Skyway and wet Tail of the Dragon
17:25 Foothills Parkway and End (some beautiful scenery in the closing scenes)