BLOOMING BLUE RIDGE

Bulls Gap, Tennessee. Named after John Bull, who was given a 55 acre grant in an important east west pass and started a stage line. Some years later, Volunteer Speedway was built.

Volunteer bills itself as the ‘world’s fastest dirt track’ and I can believe it. It is a bowl, and the track is way up the sides of the bowl. 32 degree banking on a 4/10-mile track means it is more like a carnival ‘wall of death’ than a racetrack. Stock cars have averaged over 123mph around this short track.

They were going to run a GNC race there in June. Pam reminded me that the Blue Ridge Parkway was supposed to bloom in June. Two reasons are better than one, so we headed for Tennessee.

We super-slabbed it to Kentucky, then jumped on some south-eastern Kentucky blacktop. Coal country. Mountains and twisty roads. I just followed the roads, trying to head kind of south and kind of east. We finally ran across US 23, the Hillbilly Highway, and made some time south toward Bulls Gap.

You can’t really appreciate the banking just looking at the track. Once the bikes start flying around, though, you are actually looking at the backs of the riders, not their sides, as they head down the short back straight.

This was not going to be a Harley-only race. Wild man Sam Halbert was there on the Memphis Shades Yamaha.

Smith plastered to the banking on his Harley.

Jess Roeder got into some body English sliding on the slippery red clay.

You can see the effort required to stand a bike up on the banking.

Gedeon was on a Triumph.

Halbert and Mees battle down the back straight during practice.

Halbert finally slides all the way up the banking and checks out the bales.

Varnes and Hacker around three and four.

Russell at speed.

Mees won the race, starting a string of three victories over the next three races. Bulls Gap, Lima, and Joliet.

The next morning, we headed for the Blue Ridge. We got onto the parkway in the late afternoon, after stopping at Wheels through Time, and went into cruising mode. Ride awhile. Stop awhile at an overlook. Ride a little more. Stop again for awhile.

The Parkway was blooming! We rode and stopped, rode and stopped, enjoying the sights. We were in full sit, do nothing on an old picnic bench at an overlook when a lone car pulled into the parking lot. A gentleman got out, pulled a fiddle from the back seat, faced the valley and began serenading the mountains. We sat, transfixed, through three songs. He put the violin back in the car and we applauded. I don’t think he had realized we were there until we started clapping.
I went over and talked to him for a while. He said he lived ‘down in the valley’, but came up once or twice a month to hear the fiddle from the hills, because it ‘sounded better’. I doubt if any violin at Carnegie Hall ever sounded sweeter.

We went our separate ways, he back to his valley, and we north along the Parkway. We got a room at the Bluffs Lodge, and had dinner at the restaurant on the Parkway. I tried the barbequed pork on two corn pancakes. Pretty good.

The next morning, we headed up the road, stopping at Mount Mitchell for breakfast. The breakfast was good, and the view was spectacular.

The flowers along the parkway were not in full bloom: we were a week early or a week late. But full bloom or not, they were beautiful. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

We pulled off the Parkway when we saw a sign for Grandfather Mountain. Pretty touristy, but we were tourists! They even had a small zoo with bears that were experts in begging food from the visitors.

Farther along the Parkway, we saw a sign for the Blue Ridge Music Center, along with a small hand-lettered sign announcing: MUSIC TODAY! We pulled in, enjoyed some traditional music, and looked through the exhibits in the center.

We continued up the Parkway to Humphries Gap, and turned West on US 60. 60 is the old US road that runs across the country, including West Virginia. We stopped at Hawk’s Nest to look at the view of the New River.

Then we followed the Kanawha River Valley and US 60 to Charleston, and headed for home.