It's been a long winter, a really rough winter, and spring fever is at, well, fever pitch. Gotta do some riding and a day ride just won't hack it. Along with Karen and Al, I head further south, making my second trip this year to Suches, Georgia. The plan was to meet out in the Crab Creek Valley early on the Thursday morning before Easter Sunday. That was the plan, but perhaps I was a bit over-eager to get on the road. Finally getting everything, almost everything anyway, loaded onto KawasiMoto, I backed out of the garage and then started to hop off to close the garage door. Oops! It's best to put down the kickstand before leaving the bike... A quick phone call to Al to let him know that it might take a while for me to get to the meeting point, although, if he was willing to come over to help pick the bike back up so that I wouldn't have to unload it, I might make it quite a bit quicker. Of course they came over - they wouldn't have missed this for anything.
And then, we were on the way, cutting through the DuPont State Forest to Hwy. 276, and then down along the headwaters of the East Fork of the French Broad to cut over to the Pickens Hwy. via Rocky Bottom. That's a nice little twisty backroad that dodges a lot of traffic and by the time that we reached Rocky Bottom on the Pickens Hwy., it had warmed up enough to start shedding some layers. Ah, spring!

We took a round-about route over through Walhalla, South Carolina, riding up Hwy. 28 north of Walhalla. As you start to climb into the mountains, you pass the entrance to the Stumphouse Tunnel, a state park created to preserve a tunnel that was almost constructed before the Civil War. Originally, the plan was to construct a rail line between Charleston, SC and Cincinatti, Ohio. Financial difficulties prevented the completion of the tunnel and after the plan was revived, the Civil War blazed across the south, once again preventing construction of the line. More of the history can be gleaned by clicking the link above. Today, the site of the long tunnel beneath Stumphouse Mtn. is part of a popular park. We made use of the park to take our first food break of the day, and walked up the short path to the tunnel.

Looking out from inside the tunnel. Wet, cold, and dark - great place to cool off on a hot summer day, but pretty chilly in early spring. Here's an interesting note from the Walhalla Chamber of Commerce - "The Stumphouse Tunnel is today used as a recreational site. Because the temperature is around 50 degrees and the humidity is about 85 percent year-round, a doctor at Clemson University decided to temporarily store and age blue cheese (in the tunnel.) The environment of the tunnel was later duplicated in the Clemson Agricultural Center and the cheese making was moved there."

After leaving the tunnel, we followed Hwy. 28 north to the popular (for bikers) Warwoman Road that leads west to Clayton, Georgia. From Clayton, we continued west on Hwy. 76. A 'must-stop' is the little antique shop west of town - how can you resist a place that advertises Man Stuff? Lots of cool stuff to look at and of course, time for a goofy pic or two...

From Hwy. 76, we dived south on Hwy. 197, a twisty two-lane road that winds along the west shoreline of Lake Burton. Traffic was light and we got to enjoy the combination of a smooth asphalt playground and a sunny spring day. Woohoo!
We rode on, taking Hwy. 356 over to Helen, Georgia to pick up some beer for camp. Helen is a ticky-tacky little tourist town with a faux Bavarian theme. It has a lot of heavy traffic, and it was good to get back out the other side of town to hit open roads again on our way to Suches, Georgia. At the point where Hwy. 9 intersects with Hwy. 60 south of Suches, you see the historical marker below. Next to the marker is a tall heap of stones placed there by passers-by. To me, the sign marks the beginning of a great mountain ride, a twisty, rolling delight that leads you across Woody Gap (where the Appalachian Trail crosses the highway on its way to Maine) before dropping down into the valley where T.W.O lies. T.W.O. is a motorcycle only camping resort that is a popular base camp for riders from all over the eastern U.S. that ride in to enjoy the miles and miles of sinuous mountain roads. It was our destination for the night as well.