EchoBooming in Birmingham

So I spent May 25-29th driving around the moutians of Western NC (and a little bit of Eastern TN). NASIOC held it’s 6th annual “Dragon Meet” at Fontana Village, NC. My “driving vacation” centered around a little place known by several names:

• Deal’s Gap, NC
• US 129
• Tail of the Dragon
• The Dragon

Your best bet for more information is http://tailofthedragon.com.
The best way to describe the road is this:

318 turns, 11 miles

I spent my 6 days up there on various daytrips including a loop that included a quick stop off in the tourist trap that is Gatlinburg, TN for lunch and then down to Cherokee, NC and then back over to Fontana Village. One trip over to Franklin and Highlands, NC, an entire day spent on gravel (in someone else’s car), and nearly an entire day spent driving “the dragon” itself (while avoiding a few bike wrecks).

Highlights:
The trip up, loaded down with 8 shocks, 4 springs, 4 top spring mounts, 4 wheels, 4 tires, one oil cooler, and all of my luggage. (overlooking Ocoee Dam #3).

Slow moving traffic on the Foothills Parkway.

Dork gear as my passenger.

On top of a mountian labeled as “Holy Butt” on my GPS program.

A riverbank made up of junked cars south of Cherokee, NC (click the pic to see the full size image).

Cruising on NC28 (aka “the hellbender“).

Parked checking out the waterfall northwest of Highlands, NC.

Fontana Dam. Largest dam east of the Mississippi (close to where we stayed).

Photos taken by others after the jump
Quick roadside repair when one of my coil packs (basically a sparkplug wire/distributor/coil all in one unit that sits on top of your sparkplug) came loose on Thursday night. (big thanks to Carnot, ydant, et al. for their help with the repairs, and a big smack in the face to myself for not tightening it up all of the way when I worked on my car last )

Campfire Friday night.

Kickball game with a family that was vacationing Friday night (Kickball rocks!).

Cooling off the cars after a hard push over the dragon Sunday morning.

Me describing something at the Pigroast Saturday night (I’m partially behind the guy with his back to the camera on the right side of the picture).

Pigroast group pic (click to zoom).

Group Pic taken from the top of Fontan Dam on Sunday morning (a good number of people slept in) (click to zoom HUGE).

I can’t wait until next year’s meet!