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Here are a selection of photographs from our first full day at Daytona Beach. Nursing Wild Turkey induced hangovers, we all missed breakfast and started the day late with a ride around Daytona Beach in convoy. Then across the road from our hotel around the Nascar International Speedway, we spent the an afternoon admiring the choppers and bars at the swapmeet in the Speedway grounds, before heading back to Main Street.

After sitting up way too late last night, it was only the promise of missing breakfast that got me out of bed before 9am today. After breakfast, shower and packing we didn’t hit the road until after 11am :-(

With a short stop at IHOP (couldn’t resist!) for a very late lunch, we had a very tedious 300 mile freeway ride covering half the remaining distance back to Orlando. The scenery from I-75 is flat and very much the same right the way through Georgia, except riding through the maze of exits among the skyscrapers in Atlanta.

I’ve never seen so many people pulled by the cops, we saw at least half a dozen cars on the hard shoulder with a red and blue interrogating the driver. Just south of Atlanta drove through the first speed trap I’ve seen in the States, with a cop pulled onto the central reservation pointing a radar gun into the oncoming traffic. It’s almost like being back in England! Having said that, the speed limit is 75 along most of the I-75, and the country isn’t awash with Gatso cameras every few miles to fine you £40 if you’re a touch over the limit…

We reached headed right for another Howard Johnson hotel in Ashburn, arriving just before 6pm. It was sunny throughout the whole day, and neither of us needed any of the cold weather gear we bought on the outbound journey 2 weeks ago (timewarp post forthcoming ~Al). Even so, 5 hours of squaring off the tyres at 70mph we were pretty tired by the time we stopped.

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1. Day 1: Cherohala Skyway

So, that’s it for our trip to Tennessee. Two weeks gone in a flash. For some reason we booked a condo in Orlando from tonight, but even with the best will in the world it is going to take us 3 days to ride back to Florida.

Luckily we had packed everything last night since we were supposed to check out by 10am, and I didn’t wake up until 9:12am. D’oh! I guess I should have hit “snooze” instead of “shut up, I’m still tired” on my alarm at 7am. With some running around, brushing of teeth while getting dressed, and skipping inessentials like breakfast, we managed to make it out by a hair…

The last couple of times we’ve ridden into the mountains this week, it’s almost induced hypothermia. Thankfully, the weather has held out for us today. Even though we needed a full complement of jackets and gloves, it was actually pretty warm in the sun.

As soon as we pulled out of the resort, first stop: Gatlinburg Mountain Grill, for a hearty ham and eggs late breakfast to see us on our way through the days riding. We were fed, watered and finally saddled up and on our way proper before 11am.

The first part of the route through the Smoky Mountains National Park and into North Carolina was all the better for being in daylight, with brooks and creeks at the roadside peppered with an occasional waterfall from the rock formations. The roads actually weren’t quite so scary now that the ice had melted, except in an occasional tunnel or a deep valley (that made my butt clench heart skip a beat a couple of times today!). Cherokee and Bryson City, however, we had seen before when we rode back from Deal’s Gap last week (March 3rd, timewarp post forthcoming ~Al).

We crossed back into Tennessee and started the gorgeous ride along Cherohala Skyway around 2pm. Unfortunately, we kept stopping to take a zillion photos of the panoramic scenery along the way, so we didn’t reach the first pit-stop at the other side for almost another 2 hours!

I don’t know where Tave has gone in this picture… but perhaps 4 hours without a toilet break was torturing her unnecessarily ;-)

We’d secretly hoped that we might make it into Georgia today, but we had been told not to miss the Cherohala Skyway by: the staff of Gatlinburg Harley (a weird dealership — it has no bikes!!); barstaff at the Hard Rock Cafe; ShawnKing; not to mention various bikers we’d run in to through the week, and we certainly weren’t disappointed. 7 hours and 168 miles later, we decided to call it a day at the first hotel we reached on I-75.

We can makeup the shortfall on mileage tomorrow when we hit the interstate. Here’s hoping we can miss the traffic through Atlanta.

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1. FL 2 TN Day 1: Sunburn Injuries

Today’s schedule would have been to ride far enough to cross the border into North Carolina, around 200 miles away. But, the weather forecast warned us to expect storms and heavy rain in the afternoon, so we set off good and early again hoping to make it past Columbia (about 100 miles) before the storms came in, which would leave us with 250 miles or so tomorrow. If we got further, then that would be a bonus.

By 10am we were already well over halfway to Columbia, but it was starting to get pretty cold, so we stopped at a gas station cum diner for a coffee to warm up. Watching TV as we hugged our coffee mugs to get some life back into our chilly fingertips, the weatherman said there was a 50% chance of snow-showers in Knoxville, TN (about 30 miles west of our destination, Gatlinburg) overnight and into tomorrow morning. Squinting at the map, it looked as though North Carolina was going to escape… Tave and I were contemplating giving up and going back to sunny Florida, but since our condo is already paid we decided to press on and only turn back if the roads became dangerous.

No sooner had we made our decision than the heaven opened, and huge sheets of rain were blown through the forecourt, soaking our bikes, our luggage and our enthusiasm. I dashed outside to push the Harleys under cover, and I was drenched just a minute later when I got back indoors. Stupidly, I had figured that the weather wouldn’t be drastically different just a few hundred miles north of Florida, and we hadn’t brought winter gloves, or waterproofs, and Tave was wearing sandals and no jacket. D’oh! Couldn’t have been much more wrong there.

From USA Today Weather:

Severe weather threat – On the southern end of the storm system, thunderstorms are rolling through parts of western North Carolina, western South Carolina, central Georgia, western Florida and southeastern Alabama this morning. Severe thunderstorm watches are in effect from eastern Georgia through western Florida. The main threats from these storms will be large hail and damaging winds.

10:30 came and went, and the rain wasn’t showing signs of letting up. We’d seen some hotels a junction back down the interstate, so we decided to call it a day and make a run for Orangeburg for the rest of the day. I left the scale on the map this time, so you can see how pathetically short a distance we’d covered…

We picked a hotel with a laundry, and when the rain abated briefly later in the afternoon got directions to Walmart for some fishermans wet weather gear, and Applebys for dinner. Pretty stylish, huh?

Here’s hoping the snow doesn’t stop us from riding into Gatlinburg tomorrow!

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1. Day 20: Oak Creek Canyon
2. Key West
3. Day 1: Sunburn Injuries
4. Day 2: Carolina Steakhouse

Jetlag is still on our side, so we woke up easily around 6am and had showered, eaten breakfast, checked out and were loaded up and on the road soon after 8am. Long before lunch we had crossed from Florida into Georgia on I-95!

Call me crazy, but I’ve really missed IHOP‘s Eggs Benedict for the six months we’ve been away, and was itching for the chance to set things straight at our lunch stop near Riceboro, GA. As usual we were able to pick up a hotel coupons booklet on the way out of IHOP, and found a decent looking hotel in Hardeeville, South Carolina to spend the night.

The skies grew grayer, and the air colder, as the day progressed, but we still had an hour of daylight when we crossed from GA into SC, so we decided to press on a little further. At a shade over 200 miles for the day when we arrived at the next hotel from the coupon booklet in Walterboro, it was starting to get dark, and we were definitely feeling the cold set in. Amazing that the weather can be so different only a few hundred miles further North than yesterday’s blazing sun!

The Rice Plantation Inn, Walterboro was quite a treat as it turned out. Despite the low price for the night, the room was large, clean and well kept. Better still, there’s a fabulous Steak House right next door, where we enjoyed a very American steak and baked potato dinner.

The weather forecast predicts rain storms moving into the Carolinas around noon tomorrow, so we’ll have to make another early start to cover as many miles as we can, before an early check in at our next stop to avoid getting soaked in the afternoon. Perhaps we should have found out how much colder and wetter it is in these parts before we set off from Florida in our Summer biking gear?

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1. Day 20: Oak Creek Canyon
2. Key West
3. Day 1: Sunburn Injuries