The Blue Ridge Parkway, Part II

Day 4: Another fantastic day of riding on the BRP. I really can't get enough of the roads or the views.

The ride down to Asheville, NC turned out to be a bit longer than I expected. Of course, it didn't help that I was taking every cool looking turn-off I came to...

Obligatory food post: I stopped at a little roadside restaurant just north of Fields of Dan, VA (that's actually the name of the town - cool if your name is Dan, right?). I took a look at the menu to see if they had anything interesting before deciding on the place, and they had the following listed:

We're Famous For This!
Two corn cakes with melted cheese and 4 oz. of BBQ pork topped with slaw and BBQ sauce.

Now, when I saw "corn cakes," I had to assume they meant something like cornbread. Wrong. These were PANCAKES! When my order arrived, I thought they were kidding me. "Hey, let's fuck with the guy with the NY license plates," I figured they were thinking. Nope, that's just what you get - a pancake topped with melted cheese and (a lot more than 4 oz of) BBQ pork, covered over with another pancake. Thankfully, the slaw was on the side to reduce the challenge to my Yankee palate. Still, I really didn't know whether to reach for the BBQ sauce or the syrup until I tasted it (I reached for the BBQ sauce). Overall, it was pretty good, even if the BBQ pork was a little less spectacular than the previous day's. I guess sometimes you just gotta roll with what ends up on your plate when you're on the road!

There were a couple of sections of the BRP that were still closed from the hurricanes that swept through last year, so I left the BRP for Route 221 at Linville Falls, NC. On the map, you see a nice straight shot down to I-40 which you can then take into Asheville, NC. The reality, however, was far different. Route 221 was probably the most hairpin road I have ever driven on, with a few sections that you couldn't possibly do more than 20 mph on without an up-to-date will. So instead of making it to Asheville before dusk, I ended up rolling into town for gas around 9:00 PM. After that, it was a fairly short ride down to Hendersonville, NC to meet up with another old bandmate, Eric, and his wife Marion. However, riding the interstate in the dark down here on a bike is not really for the faint of heart - speed limits are really "suggestions," and you have a hard time deciding if the insect that just hit your windscreen was really smaller than the semi trying to pass you in the right hand lane at about 95 mph.