It was always one of my favorite fea-
tures and it was a pleasure to see
them in action.
After an early breakfast on Mon-
day, the Tour was off at 9:00 sharp fol-
lowing Tom’s lead. The Monday
portion covered a lot of territory.
There’s not much flat land on the back
roads of far western North Carolina
and we did numerous ups and downs
on the curvy, damp roads offered that
day. We kept moving at a good clip and
the morning drive took us through
Franklin to Highlands, North Car-
olina for lunch, partially along “Moon-
shiners 28” – a very twisty two-lane
with lots of scenic attractions. At
Highlands, lunch was at a choice of
several restaurants in town. We chose,
with a few other Tour participants, the
old Edward Inn and Spa, a nice hotel,
dating from a beginning in 1883 with
modern construction in 1935. We left
Highlands at the back end of the
group and had to play “catch-up” on
our way into Georgia, to Dillard, and
back into North Carolina where we
followed the roads back to Rob-
binsville, noting roadside attractions
and scenery. We returned to the Lodge
in mid-afternoon.
Dinner was terrific with many
choices and afterwards Tom briefed us
on Tuesday’s run to include the fa-
mous “Tail of the Dragon.” Guests for
the evening were Ron Johnson and his
wife who ran the souvenir shop at the
Deals Gap (population: 6) where the
run would begin. He told how, after re-
tirement, he had decided to promote
the Dragon route and let people know
how special it was with its advertised
318 turns in eleven miles of ups and
downs. He mentioned that Michael
Schumacher had brought his motorcy-
cle over from Germany to run the
route. The Dragon is a favorite chal-
lenge for motorcycle riders. Johnson’s
shop hosts the Killboy group who pho-
tograph all the vehicles that run the
Dragon every day and post the images
on their website for purchase.
The next morning we awoke to see
the results of a night time windstorm
and found all of the cars covered with
wet pine needles and leaves. After a
hand-squeegee cleanup, we were off at
9:00 a.m. to the beginning of the
Dragon, following a good warm-up
route on some windy back roads. We
stopped at the souvenir store at Deal’s
Gap where the “Tail of the Dragon”
run begins. Lots of hats, shirts, sou-
venirs and decals were available and
many purchases were made.We left as
a group to take on the “Dragon” and it
was an exciting 11 miles, especially
with the wet surface and the multi-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2016 38