6. Southwest, Down Slope

Someone said to me, “Hey, Mike, you side-tracked into ‘likker sickles’ in Carolina and kind of left us hanging. Did y’all ever get home?”

Why, yes, yes, we did.

To get to the flatlands from Asheville requires climbing in elevation, first. We rode the Blue Ridge Parkway through terrain so steep that there’s not always a way around, so some roads go through the hills.

Jill pulled over at a marker for the highest point on the scenic byway where a fellow motorcyclist offered to take our picture. I, in turn, took a photo of him and his bike in front of the same sign. After all, having ridden all the way from Ontario (the one in Canada), he shouldn’t have to go home without proof of having been there.



We found the end of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Cherokee, NC. Then, with the game afoot and our blood high, we entered the Cherohala Skyway.

As it is with many motorcyclists, the Cherohala is a favorite of mine. The name is derived from the names of the national forests through which it passes, the Cherokee, and Nantahala. “Nantahala”, means, “Land of the Noonday Sun”. The hills are so high and steep that the sun can only shine in the valleys at noon.

The Skyway has breath-taking views and challenging roads. All the same, I’d find myself leaning into twisting downhill turns till I was way too close to Jill’s tail light. I’d shut the big Honda down, back way off to space us out, then find it happening again.

For flat landers, like me, the experience of riding the BRP and the Skyway is almost mystic. The effect of being there, of having been there, cannot be summed up in a few words and photographs.
You might note that Jill took these pictures, one-handed, while riding her own bike on the straighter stretches of road.
Down through Tennessee and into Alabama we flew. We made fair time, and night began to overtake us near Huntsville. We elected to make for the Joe Wheeler State Park, near Athens.

>The park was named for one of the Confederacy’s youngest generals who also served the United States as both soldier and statesman.

Naturally, the Ranger was nowhere to be found by the time we rolled up, so we inquired about staying at the lodge. I’m beginning to think there is some kind of collusion between the Rangers and the lodge managers.

It being in the off-season, as well as late in the day (and I balked at the rates and was headed for the door), the clerk gave us a discount that Rashid, himself, couldn’t have beat. The view of the marina was cool, and we had a similar view the following morning as we broke our fast in the dining room named for Mrs. General Wheeler.

From Athens we make for the Natchez Trace Parkway and enter just above Tupelo, Mississippi.

The old Trace evolved from deer paths and Indian trails and eventually became a road that tied together the Mississippi, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and the only sure way to get goods and mail from Natchez to Nashville.

The parkway is a good road to travel and even with low speed limits we figured to make better time than on alternative routes. Auto traffic, truck traffic and traffic lights all make for delays and we need to make good use of our time. Good use of the time included a few stops along the way, there being no shortage of points of interest.
Pearl River ↓


I’m told that if a rider observes the posted speed limit and visits every historic attraction, it will take him two days to get from Natchez to Nashville. As it was, it took us the best part of the day to get ourselves on down to Jackson and over to Vicksburg.

(Mississippi River) ↓

Of course, no visit to Vicksburg is complete without a stopover at Rashid’s Beachwood Inn. There was a nice steakhouse next door where Jill, and I, dined. Waking up to a power failure in the wee hours was a little disconcerting, but no one else seemed to mind and the bikes were just outside the door, so I returned to bed and dreams of pursuit by the forces of decency.

From Vicksburg we made our way across the Tensas and southwest to Alexandria, Louisiana.

At our fuel stop, I noted how cheerful and friendly the clerks were, one even ragging me, a little, about having to get my own coffee. While I don’t consider myself a, proverbial, “old fool”, I couldn’t help but notice the college-aged clerk looking my way, occasionally.

As we were leaving, and I mentioned to the young woman how polite everyone was, she asked, “Where did you get your Texas hat?” I told her we live in Corpus Christi. “I’m from Longview”, she told me. That put a pretty fine point on things, but she went on to tell me that if she was rude to people her daddy would wash her mouth out. The poor child, living in a foreign land, was starved for contact with honest, Texas, folk.

Honest Texas folk were in our path further down the road, in Oberlin. Friends who had been in the motel business for years had finally had enough, enough of twenty-four/ seven weeks, and enough of tiny town life.
A new grandchild, in the Republic, might have had something to do with it, as well.

They had cut a deal with a red dot investment group and were ready for a rest. While details are settled, they are constructing temporary quarters on pasture land, jokingly calling it, “Hillbilly Heaven”. We jawed a while, admired the on-going construction, said hello to their horses and headed for the Sabine River.

This is Dixie. She’s a good girl. ↓

Having looked forward to traveling on LA-12, we, naturally, were detoured. The detour took us past tree farms that had been recently harvested, the land standing in sharp contrast to my recollection of Arkansas’ careful forest management.

And traveling past these eyesores meant riding on what has to be the worst stretch of paved road I’ve ever been on. There is no way I’d willingly ride my own machine, much less one loaned by a friend, on a road that bad.
The only other vehicles we saw being driven on that highway were a pair of ATVs.

We finally crossed the Sabine and were back in the Republic. Timing had put us in a place where to continue would mean being nearly home, but too tired to ride the last 120 miles, safely. We elected to stay in Beaumont, at Rashid’s Roadway Inn. This is one of those places where they put you in another room rather than lengthen the chain that causes the toilet to run.
Ask me how I know.

<In the morning I found that some jackass had needlessly backed a peesachit truck very close to the Valk. No harm, no foul, I guess, but I find that particularly annoying so I fixed him by throwing my trash on top of his crapload of junk. We loaded the scoots and scooted.

We scooted on the Sam Houston toll road where you have to pay a cover charge every couple of miles and across a bridge so high I got nosebleed. Then, we scooted some more and stopped in Van Vleck and ate at a favorite seafood restaurant.

At the convenience store, in Palacios, a carload of gang boys asked about our ride. The distance we had traveled stunned them.
The weather remained nice, a few rain showers in the distance moved aside for us, and the buffeting wind we usually feel this close to home was buffeting elsewhere.</strong

In fourteen days we have seen ten states, visited three farms, rode four scenic parkways and traveled 3,585 miles. Exhilaration, friendly faces and kind words cannot be tallied.

The Road goes on forever