Day Two 8/20/11:
Woke up early the next day, packed up and hit the road. We headed back into Gatlinburg for some breakfast, and ended up at Dunkin' Doughnuts. We used the same parking as the night before. We headed south out of town and onto some nice back roads. Everything was still wet from the night before, so we took it easy until things dried out.
We tried to just stay on back roads to get us to our destination, and ended up on a one way road through a park, which also had a self guided vehicle tour. The views were great, but traffic was moving only 3-5 mph most of the time. The bikes started to over heat, so we ended up working our way past the cars and got out to the exit about 1.5 hours later, traveling about 6 miles. Won't be going down that road again...
We backtracked a bit, and finally found our way out to the Dragon. Headed through a "sobriety" check point, before heading up to the outlook. We pullover for some photo ops, then waited for a break in traffic. Mike and Dan headed out first, and I brought up the rear, knowing I would hold the other two up. The riding on this road was great. I wish the road was longer, but what can you do? We got to the bottom, and stopped at the store. We were all wearing grins when we took off our helmets. We hung out at the store for a bit and watched some of the other bikes coming in and out. I picked up a couple of souvenirs for my display case, and we headed back on our way.
Mike wanted to take us into Helen, Ga, so we headed that direction. He showed us a lot of the roads he learned to ride on, all equal or better to the dragon. Once we got into Helen, we stopped at a small restaurant just outside the center of town. We realized at this point we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, so we ordered some appetizers to share. Traffic headed into Helen was terrible, and claimed a Harley clutch. We could hear the bike revving in traffic, but it wasn't going anywhere. The woman riding seemed to not know what to do, so Dan and I ran out and pushed her trike out of traffic.
We finished up our late lunch, and headed south towards Atlanta. We ate dinner at Papadeux, a seafood place. I tried frog legs for the first time, which was kinda cool. Sweeter than chicken, but more tender. I had some crabcakes for dinner, with a skewer of shrimp and scallops on the side. Once we finished there, we headed out to another bar which had some beer that Mike wanted us to try.
The beer was a blueberry wheat beer, which was pretty good. It was very sweet, but wasn't heavy. We hung out at the bar for awhile, just people watching. Once we finished there, we decided to get a hotel for the night. We ended up at a Marriott in Alpharetta, checking in about midnight. It was a great day of riding, and a slight disappointment since we knew the next days riding was not going to be as good.