Plateau Corvette Club

Les and Kelly Rhoades hosted an overnight club ride to visit the Bristol Dragway to experience the thunder of injected nitrous 3,500+ horsepower rockets. Six Corvettes (11 people) came to the line and stagged for departure at the Crossville Buc-ee’s. The threat of rain loomed all around us, but everyone was still excited and happy to be on our overnight road trip to Bristol.  Everyone knows it’s been a very rainy summer thus far, so we all expected to get wet at some point on this trip. When we arrived in Johnson city at 3:30pm the rain was pouring down.  We were only 20 minutes from the drag strip, so we made a unanimous decision to check-in at the hotel and see if we could find any updated information to tell us if the race had been cancelled or not. That event research ended with a long story, so I’ll skip to the fact that Tina finally found a post indicating the race had been rain delayed, but expected to proceed at 6:30pm in the evening. Fast forward…the racing did continue some time after 6pm and we got to enjoy hours of heart pounding 1/8 mile drag racing without the rain every returning.

The next morning, we woke up to the sun shining and nearly clear skies. The convertibles were put down as we readied ourselves for some great North Carolina twisty road driving. We started off the morning by driving to the Hot Springs NC Visited Center for a quick stop before heading south for 36 miles on “Hwy 209 – The Rattler”.  Traveling thru the Pisgah National Forest and over the Great Smokey Mountains is where you’ll find “The Rattler”. This stretch of road has a reputation for offering some of the most attention demanding, but beautiful driving you will ever experience. Once you’ve successfully ridden “The Rattler”, you will understand why all the others could merely be considered preparation rides.

We ate lunch in Maggie Valley before making driving the northern section of “Moonshine 28” where we stopped at the Fontana Dam Visitors Center. Lucky for us, the road leading to the Fontana Dam had been recently repaved making for a fun smooth drive. In the good old days this road was popular with moonshiner runners. The road today boasts great twisties with wide sweepers and fun up and down sections to enjoy.

It was no quiescence we went in this direction because Moonshiner 28 connects to the eastern end of the “Tail of The Dragon”.  By the time we left Fontana Dam the rain started coming down quite heavily.  This slowed down any further possibilities of spirited driving and allowed us to simply enjoy driving along Cheoah Lake on our way to the Tail of the Dragon. For those who have yet to drive this section of Hwy 129…it boasts 318 curves in just 11 miles and hyped to be one of America’s most thrilling destinations for motorcycle riders and sports car enthusiasts. Even on this Sunday in the rain the blue and red lights were out patrolling. We passed one police car parked on side of the road giving a little Mazda Miata a souvenir for his efforts. Our drive continued slow and controlled in the pouring rain. For us, it was yet another wet run down the Tail of The Dragon.