Great Smoky Mountains, Road to Nowhere

I stumbled upon this 8 mile section of road while planning my latest trip down to North Carolina, and became almost mesmerized by it. The history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park really intrigues me, and the so called Road to Nowhere is a very interesting footnote. The road has been a bone of contention between the National Park Service and some Swain County, NC residents since the 40's, and the issue was only resolved recently. It's done and dusted. The road will not be completed, and Swain county will receive some millions of $$ instead. If interested, check out gribblenation.com/nclost/roads/nowhere. A short history and explanation can be found there.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Road to Nowhere
• Fontana Road
• Great Smoky Mountains
• Swain County
• dprider02
• Suzuki DR650
• motovlogs
• riding
• motorcycles smoky
• mountains

[JudgeKnot]

First time I did road to onowhere, it was a twilight zone experience. Your vid didnt quite give the wukderness feel one gets after the tunnel. For those curious, the road leading to the tunnel is much like the Blue Ridge Parkway, without the overlooks.

In critique mode, I wish you had developed the history in more detail and accuracy.

(Sorry for typos. Keyboard is raggedy.)

[dprider02]

@JudgeKnot I went back the following morning in a heavy fog. Positively creepy!

As to your critique, given that I like to keep my vids relatively short, I really took the story as far as I could for one installment. As for accuracy, I'm sure the story of this road has many twists, and will vary some from teller to teller. I did read up a fair bit on the subject from numerous sources, and though I left out a lot, I'll stick by the general accuracy of my 'nutshell' version.

[FanofNavy1]

Yeah, I like because you can see the forest of the Great Smoky Mountians, are you from North Carolina? Or were you just visiting?

[dprider02]

@FanofNavy1 There are many other roads in the area that provide better views of the mountains and forests, but this is an interesting and fun bit of road to check out. I don't live in NC, but I generally visit twice a year for 4-5 days of riding.

[FanofNavy1]

Did you like it??

[dprider02]

@FanofNavy1 The road? Yeah, it's pretty cool, but goes nowhere!

[JudgeKnot]

Giventhatb I livein the Asheville area and we sometimes getnews fromthat area,I can tell you that generation is still extremely pissed at the way it turnedout. Good style of video though. The bike is much better than those done in cars. (Keybrd still screwedc up :)

[FanofNavy1]

Wow, I bet that's cool. When are you going to go back there to NC to ride again? Where are you from? What kind of roads do you go to?

[dprider02]

@RideCamVids It's coming back to me now ... the Friday storms jogged my memory. After 4 days of perfect riding conditions, I was driving the van back towards home on that day, and I ran into such a mass of severe weather that I pulled off and got a room for the night.

[RideCamVids]

I went up there on the Friday afternoon since I remember it rained a lot on that day. On the same Friday but later in the evening I got caught in a really bad thunderstorm at Stecoah and had to ride back to Franklin in it.

It was some serious weather to be out in but I had no choice, since after the evening thunderstorms comes the fog/mist which rolls right in making visibility very difficult.