I could use some help with my Best Mountain Roads page on my blog. I've been really busy and haven't had time recently to find more great places to ride, map, and add to my site.

If you have some suggested/favorite routes in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, please post them here so I can add them as soon as I get a minute. (Please include the route numbers and mileage if you know them.)

Thanks.

 

Skyline Drive, Blue Ridge Parkway, The Dragon (Rt 129).

 

Back of the Dragon

 

I like the skyline drive better than the blue ridge parkway because the road is in much better condition as they have recently paved much of it. The skyline drive is about 105 miles long and you can drive it leisurely in 3 hours.

Also, my opinion is that the blue ridge parkway's most scenic stretch is between Boone and Ashville.

The dragon is lots of fun to drive and there are numerous scenic loops you can do from there.

 

Most of my favorite roads are in the Robbinsville/Deals Gap Area:

RT 28 out of Robbinsville, between RT143 and RT129. dumps you out at the Deals Gap resort.

RT. 28 from Robbinsville, all the way down into South Carolina, about 90 miles of incredible, twisty road, mostly deserted.

Cherohala Skyway..good road, but better view, IMO.

 

IMO, the "best" roads really depend if you're looking for scenic beauty (sweeping vistas along the mountain tops) or diving excitement (continuous tight curves through hills and valleys).

I just spent a week with a few friends on our Harleys, riding 1900 miles from the Chicago area to southeast KY and western WV. We had previously road the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cherahola Skyway, and Dragon, but avoided them this time.

While the scenic beauty of the Blue Ridge and Cherohala are spectacular, the 45 mph speed limit of the Parkway can be a PIA when you get behind someone actually doing the limit (or under). The Dragon is a wonderful experience once, but I wouldn't do it again due to the much heavier traffic, trucks (including a few semis), the very significant police presence, and numerous idiots (especially on crotch rockets, Vettes and Porsches) who passed on curves, ride your rear, etc.

We found incredible riding roads like 90 and 92 along the southern KY boarder, 27 and 62 into the Cumberland County area, and 421 and 70 through the Daniel Boone National Forest across the tip of VA into TN.
Rt. 52 along the KY-WV border is a spectacular series of twisties along the Big Sandy River, and we found dozens of 4 digit county roads that rivaled the Dragon, but where we saw fewer than a dozen other cars in over 30 miles.

Hope you will encourage your blog readers to try a few roads "less traveled", but much more fun through some of the best driving roads in the US.

 

KennyR, thanks for posting these alternate routes!

I'm purchasing a 911 in VA and I'll be driving from Richmond, VA > Raleigh, NC and then heading west to Memphis before turning northwest towards South Dakota and eventually back to NorCal after exploring the northern Rockies.

I'm still unsure which roads to take through the Great Smokies. My goal is to stay off the Interstates as much as possible and I have no interest in traveling a special highway if traffic is as bad as I've heard.

While I'm still unsure if the roads you posted are appropriate for my trip, I'm curious what resources you used (besides just studying maps) to determine the route of the Harley ride???

Thanks in advance for any/all feedback!

P.S. Please accept my apologies for some of the Porsche pilot idiocy that you've experienced. As with any marque, there is bad and good drivers so let's just hope the bad ones lighten up before something tragic happens because of their inappropriate driving.

 

As a Harley rider, I'm definitely aware of not typecasting any driver (car or motorcycle). Some of my best friends drive Porsches! The problem with the Dragon is that too many riders think their goal is to take the curves as fast as possible...you can see skid marks in almost every curve, and there's the infamous "tree of shame" in Deals Gap to attest to their stupidity.


To your question. my plan was also to stay off the interstates. I used a paper map (as well as Google Maps and a trip planner on the Harley Davidson web site) to find non-interstate routes in the general directions I wanted to go.

I find paper maps far superior to other methods for trip route planning. It's easy to find a squiggly 2 lane road through any mountainous area. I downloaded the route on my Garmin GPS via a .gpx file from Google maps. While on the ride, I used the GPS to zoom on certain county crossroads, and when I came upon a promising road (usually one of those 4 digit county roads), I detoured onto it. The GPS recalculates the route continuing onto the final destination (hotel).

As a pretty good alternative, I just routed a "via point" through any small town that was on a route I wanted to take. The GPS only routed me through one road that wasn't in near-perfect condition (and one road listed wasn't where it was supposed to be)!

As long as you have a general direction you want to go, I really think there are almost no "bad" routing options from the Smokies north/west.

 

Thanks for the feedback; I agree that paper maps are the best for planning.

 

VA 311 from Salem, Va to WVA line lots of twisty mountain roads with great scenery. 250 from Staunton to WVA, the same. Dont know the route numbers but connect the 311 and 250 through WVA great ride.