1st to 3rd of November - Fontana Village, Smokey Mountains, NC

I drove from Athens through the foothills of Appalachia to the smokey mountains. This old couple which grew up here and stayed in the same Econo lodge in Athens than I told me not to go to Asheville and go to Townsend at the SMNP instead. Apparently they live there and they say that they see many cyclists especially at Cades Cove which is a high plateau with not a lot of traffic. But I missed the right turnoff and drove along a beautiful windy road which had quite a bit of motorbike traffic. When I hit a gas station to ask where I was, I got told that I was in North Carolina and apparently on the wrong side of the National Park. It was really beautiful here and so I kept going. After 10 more miles I hit a sign saying Fontana village resort. So I went up to the Lodge, which was on top of a hill with grand hall. huge fire place and a veranda with views over the flaming fall coloured mountains. I asked for a room and it was 59$. It came with a king size bed and an balcony to the mountain view. Most of the parking lot was filled with little two-seaters. There was a Crossfire owners convention going on and I learned that this car is German engineering with American styling. I have thought the whole time that this car exist already for longer but after researching it. It looks that the first model came out in 2004. My 2002 Subaru is a collector item compared to that.
Whatever I had in the late afternoon a beautiful ride along the river and in the evening a surprisingly good meal. This morning I left to finally go to the National Park and do the bike ride at Cades Cove. On my way I went through the most touristy indian reservation, that I have ever seen. Cherokee the main town had hundreds of gift shops with native American items made in Asia and not even India to throw people off. Entering in the Park I saw that the blue ridge parkway, a road which follows the Appalachians for 468 miles was closed due to icy conditions. So I went to the nearby visitor center and asked whether I could cycle up there and they said: Well I guess that's possible but be careful of ice in the tunnels. So I climbed a 7% accent until I reached the top after 700 vertical meters at big witch gap and than I turned back and just rolled all the way back down with absolute certainty that no car would come. It was a dream and I was so happy, just one of the best bike rides ever.
In order to go back home to Fontana I wanted to make the loop along Cades cove and a little unpaved one way road down to the devils tail. The whole park was choked by cars. I had read about that in Bill Brysons Appalachian Trail book but forgotten all about it. Cades cove was stop and go for hours. I got overtaken by fat pedestrians! I was pretty happy that I had audio books with me. It is just so much better to listen to a book while driving than just obsessing about not moving and wasting time which could be used for much nicer things. But the worst and weirdest thing was yet to come. By the Way: never take your road bike there the road is riddled with potholes and there is barely space to pass the trucks. Coming finally to the turn off for the little unpaved road back I had a very slow moving Jeep in front of me and when I tried to overtake him he (Considering the obnoxiousness I assume it was a man but I did not see the driver due to dark tinted windows.) wouldn't let me. I am pretty sure in Tennessee they have the slower cars use turnouts rule as well. But I had to stay behind him a crawl in the first gear. So I stopped took some photos and waited for him to advance a bit. than I went back in the car and drove leisurely further until I hit him again and repeated the game. After several miles of stop and go a car came from behind me and I left again after a quarter mile there was a young tree blocking the road and I and the four guys from the car behind me got out to remove it. I told them that there is a very slow and aggressive guy in front of me and that he had obviously pulled the tree on the road, we went head shaking back into our cars only to hit 300 meter further two more huge branches blocking the road. And after going nicely for another 10 minutes we met Mister IamslowbutIcanputtreesontheroad and had to stay behind him until the end of the road and because he was so slow I had to drive quite a time in the dark to reach the hotel. By than I was really cranky and hungry and the day which began so perfectly was pretty much ruined. I wanted originally stay another night out here, but now I think I will go fast through North Carolina, perhaps stay election night in Raleigh or some other city and hit the coast soon. We will see.