Another Biking Day

For today’s ride, our “bike” had an engine and no pedals.  We are still recuperating from yesterday’s pedal ride.  Our local campground owner suggested a route for us and we followed most of it.  Damascus is only a mile or two from the VA/TN state line and the next town south is Shady Valley, TN.  On the way there, we stopped to see the world’s shortest tunnel, through Backbone Rock

The following is taken from the home page for Shady Valley Country Store:

Nestled in a remote, high mountain valley of far eastern Tennessee, The
Shady Valley Country Store opens it's doors and hearts to the
motorcycle and sports car community. We are surrounded by 3 mountains
and some of the most scenic rides in the eastern USA. Within a 12 mile
radius of The Country Store there are 489 curves that is called "The
Snake".  It can be very gentle and tons of fun or mean, vicious and
extremely dangerous all depending on how you handle "The Snake".

Before leaving the store, we had to get a picture of someone’s labor of love

This is a V-8 powered lawn tractor.  What it is used for is anyone’s guess.

We came into town from the north, and left toward the west, through the Cherokee National Forest and over “Low Gap”.  It was not as intense as Deals Gap (11 yrs ago) so we can say we’ve survived the Snake.  The roads were hilly, curvy, and smooth & clean.  Very nice weather and ride! 

We continued west to cross South Holston Lake and turned south to see the massive earthen dam built by TVA that created this lake.  We rode over the top of the dam, turned around, and rode it again.

The outlet area had a lot of fly fishermen.

 

We returned to Damascus in time to visit with some neighbors from Alabama who are here for the month to do a lot of bicycling. We went to dinner with them and had a great time.  It sure is easy to make friends with total strangers in this lifestyle.