Driving the Dragon

Having thoroughly “done the Smokies” we decided to plan a route back to Winston-Salem that would show us some different scenery and bring us into Bryson City for the night in plenty of time to find a motel. Everything seemed to be going well until we joined up with Highway 129, what looked on the map to be a short bit of road that we’d be on for maybe 20 minutes tops. 30 minutes later I remember commenting to Cari “This road’s a bit twisty isn’t it?” as I manouevured the Kia people carrier the rental agency had deemed “compact” around yet another tight mountainside bend. “I feel like we should be on Top Gear.” After passing numerous motorbikes, very few cars, an ambulance and a police car stopped by the site of some kind of collision it had started to get dark and we still weren’t off the mountain. And I couldn’t remember that last time the road had been in any way straight. Finally we got to the bottom and decided to pull into what looked like a motel populated entirely by bikers to ask whether the road got any better from here. After being directed to Ben, the extremely helpful manager of the motel, we discovered we were still miles from our destination and he fixed us up with a map and recommended a local motel to stay at for the night. As we were about to leave he called us back and handed us each a sticker shaped like a dragon. “You guys need one of these” he said “seeing as how you’ve just driven the Dragon.” Turns out that twisty little stretch of highway 129 is a “world famous bike and sports car road.” 318 turns in 11 miles no less, and people come from all over the globe just to drive along it. This proved to be no exaggeration as we later met a woman who’d ridden her bike from Canada to get to the Dragon, and even motels 20 miles away were full of her fellow bikers. I bet the Stig would be proud.