Sunday on the Road

SUNDAY: After the lovefest at the Grand Vista Hotel in Vonore, and a killer breakfast (not many of the kids went for the sausage gravy and biscuits, but I didn't need coaching), we hit the road, right at our now customary 7.30 mark. At the bottom of the driveway we had another flat. Requiring a double patch, a fresh rimstrip, it was a lesson in humility, but a great omen for the day, since we rode smoothly thereafter. While stopped, we were graced by the chatter of a fellow hotel guest, a fellow from California, earlier from Romania, who was scouting real estate in the area. His steady patter of stories, and his unbidden advice for re-seating tires, helped us pass the time and appreciate the riding that followed. Up the "Warrior and Traders Road," the "Federal Road," or plain old Route 411, we smoothed the rest of the morning past invisible Greenback toward Maryville, twenty miles between towns. A Walmart the size of Mercer County beckoned for tire supplies and a Subway lunch another spot where people came up to the kids, today in Sunday clothes, and said, "Saw you back there just past Vonore. Where you riding to?" The kids' responses invariably light up our new friends, and they tell the kids 'what a great thing it is they're doing, and how lucky they are, and how good it is that youth in America..., and be sure to ride safe...' From my perspective, however, the kids inspiring others IS cool, and the excitement they help create in others reflects back into them too.

From Maryville we turned east toward the mountains, and began a long, steady climb out of town on a very busy road, for Sunday afternoon traffic was heading into the Smokies, the most heavily visited of all our National Parks. As town began to fade, we needed to re-water, so we stopped at an automatic carwash the last building in sight. Turns out automatic means no bathrooms or faucets, so we had to wait for a bay to come clear and then we popped some quarters in, turned the dial to "Clear Rinse," grabbed the water gun wand and blasted out bottle
and camelbacks full. Some of the other patrons gave us an odd look. Others were more polite and just pretended we were invisible.

The next few miles were awesome. Easy riding with our own shoulder lane, sweeping turns into a rising wall of mountain, then tighter turns while the parkway lost a lane, but honored the shoulder, we could tell we were now inside the hills. Townsend appeared, and our KOA shouted out for us, just one turn ahead of the National Park boundary. We set up camp, and immediately hit the river. We were a bit bonked by the long day in the sun, so the calf-deep creek and tall
canopy was a relief. Camp neighbors let the kids borrow their river tubes, so some friendly floating and rock bumping ensued. That night, the crew forsook their tents and all slept under the stars, or the leaves, a jumble of tiredness, a litter of large pups collapsed in a pile in front of the tents, limbs and hair and wet clothes all askew.

One more riding day until rest, another day on the edges of the Smokies.

-- PJClements