Cwopinger's Trail Limo Build, Travels, and BS Thread

Morning John

 

Hi Hobbs!

 

Man, the OP should really get his act together and post of some pics or something in here…

 

Hi Pings!

 

You too

 

Morning John

 

You too!

 

Hobbs!

 

Hi Pings!

 

Overland Expo East 2021

Since I’m retired and can do things now, I had made up my mind to attend Overland Expo East in Arrington, VA this year. I also wanted to do a shake down of my camping setup for future trips too. With that in mind, I started to plan the trip using part of the Smokey Mountain 1000 dual sport motorcycle route for the route up and using the Mid Atlantic Backcounty Discover Route and SM 1000 for the return leg. I also thought this would make a good trip report like an AdventureTaco story . Who am I trying to kid?! This is going to be iPhone snapshots of a trip in the southeast that’s not nearly a scenic and epic as his locations and my writing skills aren’t that good as Dan. On top of that, the return trip didn’t go as planned and the pictures aren’t really too good but if your still interested here goes.


Smokey Mountain 1000


MA BDR, I’m doing the 2 sections between Damascus and Covington, VA

Leading up to the trip the weather had been great. As my departure date approached a front pushed through and storms stretched across the southeast. As I was checking weather reports for locations along my route it was severe thunderstorm warnings and flash flood watches everywhere in north GA and NC. There are several large water crossings on the southern portion of the route that can become uncrossable with rain. With this in mind, I elected to drive the interstate to Asheville, NC to break up the 12 hour drive to VA. Also, with the severe storms they were predicting I decided to grab a hotel. Go ahead, call me a wuss.

I made most of the drive in overcast conditions, 3-4 times I needed to turn on the wipers for light rain. After dealing with Atlanta afternoon traffic, a steady light rain started for the rest of the drive to Asheville. After checking into my hotel the bottom did fall out and we had thunderstorms most of the night. I was glad I wussed out. Lol. The next morning was overcast and misty but the weather channel said it would clear until late afternoon with another round of severe weather coming in. With that in mind I rolled out to see some sights around Asheville with a stop for the night in “Mayberry,” Mt. Airy, NC.


A few years ago, Expo East was held at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. After that event people posted up pics of their trucks infront of the mansion. I wanted to do the same but I found out they want $60 just to drive onto the grounds of the estate. I’ll settle for a free picture in from of the old gatehouse, maybe I’ll photoshop my truck at the mansion one day.

Next stop was in Black Mountain, NC, this is about 12 miles east of Asheville and the setting of a book I read earlier this year. The name of the book is “One Second After” it’s the first in a trio of books set after a terrorist EMP (electro magnetic pulse) nuclear device is detonated over the US. The author is actually a history professor at a small college at the foot of the mountain, Montreat College. The local businesses, mountains, and locations at the college are described in the book. The nerd in me thought it was pretty neat to actually visit these locations. They were just like the author described.







After this I headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway to go see Mt. Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi River. By now the sun had broken through the clouds and it was getting pretty warm.



Just a couple of miles up the road things began to change. Clouds suddenly rolled in and the temps started to drop.



I turned off the Parkway onto the road up Mt. Mitchell, still hoping we would climb out of the clouds.

That didn’t happen. The temperature kept dropping, showing 57 at the parking lot at the top of the mountain. There was also about a 20-25 mph wind blowing and we were solidly IN the clouds.



They say the views are spectacular from up here. Guess I’ll need to come back to find out.

 

After this it was about 3 hours driving to Mt. Airy, NC. This is the home town of Andy Griffith and the actual inspiration for “Mayberry” from the Andy Griffith Show. The whole drive there the clouds kept closing in with the radio saying more storms tonight and rain for the next several days here and in VA. I decided to grab another hotel because I’ll be camping in the rain soon enough it sounds like. After I checked in the sun started to peak through the clouds as I was cooking my supper in the parking lot.





As I cleaned up the clouds rolled back in and looked nasty. We did get rain that night, about 9 o’clock, for 15-20 minutes. Oh well. The next morning I headed into town see the sights. Right after I parked my truck here comes the Popo.



They run a auto tour of the town in replica Mayberry cars. The tours start out of Wally’s Service Station. They have several other Mayberry locations mocked up in the neighboring buildings.









A couple of places from the show actually do exist.


The Snappy Lunch Cafe




Floyd’s barber shop

There is a small museum with many original items from the show

If you want to stay in Andy Griffith’s actual home it’s now a B&B. You need deep pockets for an overnight.

 

Enough of Mayberry, on to Expo! Several hours later I was rolling in to what we called the Expo Hobo camp.








My neighbors happens to be retired military, LE, and FD so we all hit it off and got along great.

Thursday night they were still getting set up, we walked around and saw some things but many of the vender booths weren’t manned. For the rest of Expo I was was at the Camel Trophy Skills area. This is where the driver training, recovery, and vehicle hands on classes were taught by 7P International. Most of their instructors are old Camel Trophy drivers, they really knew their stuff! All these classes were great but not nearly long enough. I would really like to attend one of their full on week long classes. Being a solo driver it was hard to get a lot of pics and I was busy writing notes too but here are a few.


Actual Camel Trophy Defender from the series




My bone stock Tacoma showing a Jeep on 35s we can do it too.


We did need to stack some rocks for me to get off the pile




We're overlanding so there must be food pics. Lol

Overall, Expo was a good time. There were several classes I would have liked to attend but couldn’t due to scheduling conflicts with the other classes. I will probably be attending next year to try to make that up. Sunday afternoon everything wrapped up. We could camp at Oak Ridge Sunday night but they were busy tearing down the displays and it was going to be a busy, loud night so most people were heading out, myself included. I headed toward Covington, VA where I would pick up the MABDR for my return trip.

Outside of Covington I got a spot at a small family owned campground. The campground was clean and quiet. There was plenty of hot water in the bathouse (Expo really needs to improve their shower facility for the event). After my shower, I went up to the office to grab some WiFi. The girl working the office was cooking dinner in a kitchen at the back of the office. I made a comment about it smelling good and I was about to go cook dinner myself. She said she had plenty and would fix me a plate, I told her it wasn’t necessary but she insisted. Fried pork chops, rice and greens it was.





The next morning I headed out on the BDR and this is where things were not like I planned. I knew the route was a mix of secondary roads and dirt/gravel but was not expecting 10-15 miles of pavement then a mile or so of gravel, back to miles of pavement. I think the longest gravel section on this leg was about 10 miles along a ridge line. It was scenic, but not what I expected from the BDR discription.




Too bad it’s not turkey season

Needless to say the 70 or so miles of the first section went pretty fast and I was at the end of this leg shortly after noon. I decided it was too early to camp so I pushed on.




Anybody remember the movie Dirty Dancing? Does the Lodge look familiar? Mountain Lake Lodge, it’s not in the Adirondacks.

 

Thanks

 

The second section of the route was similar to the first, more pavement than gravel so the miles were rolling by. Unfortunately, the first FS campground along this stretch was closed. The sign said due to damage from Hurricane Sally, I didn’t see any damage but the gate was locked so I pushed on. The second FS campground was only a couple of miles from a paved road and it showed. There were beer cans and bottles in the fire ring and some trash scattered around. It had a sketchy vibe to it, being a retired cop if I feel like it’s sketchy it probably is pretty bad so I decided to go on to a state park that was about 20 road miles away. As I got to the paved road a couple of tweekers in a rust bucket pickup we’re headed down the FS road toward that campground. I’m thinking pushing on was a good call.

My stop for the night was Hungry Mother State Park.




It was a very nice park, the primitive campsites were on top of a hill overlooking the lake. There was a nice new bathhouse with an outdoor dishwashing sink and bear proof trash containers. All of the tent sites had a flat parking pad and a large wooden deck and table.









So the next morning it was up and onto the last of the BDR. This was the best of the route so far. Small, twisty mountain roads and gravel scenic byways. All to fast I was in Damascus, VA and the end of this route. My next leg was a FS road to a campground on a lake but being it was only about 9 in the morning it was way too early to worry about camping for the day so it was time to push on.










I bet there are nice trout in this stream.


Yep, there is!



Arriving in Damascus, I stopped for gas and a pit stop. Several moto riders were filling up at the gas station to head north on the route. I gave them the info I had so far and we all went our separate ways. I had met several other moto riders along the route and it we always stopped and spoke for a few minutes. It was nice to see we were all enjoying the ride and not having any problems between us due to our mode of transportation.

 

At this point I was getting on the northern part of the Smokey Mountain 1000 route. This was in the tip of VA, NC and Tennessee. Several times during my drive I would cross the border in and out of the different states. Sometimes there were signs, most times just a note on Gaia GPS. This was a really nice part of the route. Much more gravel/dirt than the BDR- for now…















But my fun was about to stop. As the day went on I came to several FS campsites that were again closed. Some had signs about damage from Sally, some were just locked gates. I had made a quick check of the FS website before I left and didn’t notice any unusual closures, but I was cross crossing through several different FS districts so I may have just missed these closures.

I ended up in the small town of Hot Springs, NC. This part of the route is along the Smokey Mountains National Park and the Cherokee NF. I was having a hard time finding any legal dispersed camping in this area so I figured I would grab a campsite in Hot Srpings at the Hot Springs Campground. Imagine my surprise when they told me they had no campsites available. No tent or RV sites. It seems there was a local festival kicking off along with the start of the leaf peeping season so they were full up. I’ve never had a campground that was full up of their tent sites, guess there is a first time for everything.

I tried 2 other commercial campgrounds, another said they were full. I drove about 10 miles out of town to a FS campground to find it was closed with no info posted as to why. Since it was getting late in the day, and I was getting frustrated. I looked at the GPS and made a call to road trip it about 30 miles back to Asheville if I could get a hotel there. I called the Best Western that I stayed at on the way up and got a room so I headed that way with plans to just start running the southern part of the SM 1000 since it was obvious I wasn’t going to have enough time to do the north section, and I wasn’t sure what was going on with the closed FS campgrounds.

After a good nights sleep and all you can eat continental breakfast bars the day was looking pretty good. I headed out to the Blue Ridge Parkway and picked up the route headed southwest. The morning was beautiful with a light fog burning off as I gained altitude. The views into the valleys were nice. I was also in a section of the Parkway with some of the old tunnels. They are dark! Make sure to turn on your headlights.







Very quickly it was time to turn off the Parkway and onto more FS roads.



It was a pleasant drive off the mountain, a little rocky, but nice. Every dispersed campsite I came to was occupied so I’m glad I just grabbed a hotel room for the night. At the base of the mountain I popped out at North Mills River Campground. It was a nice NC recreation area that had campsites available. I’ll file that for future reference. I turned west on Yellow Gap Rd/FS 1206 only to find, you guessed it, a road closed sign and a locked gate. At this point I was a little frustrated, looking at the road map I could re-route on pavement around the closure and would actually end up at the Pisgah Ranger Station. Time to find out what was going on.

Twenty or so miles later I’m at the Ranger Station. This is one of the main stations for the Blue Ridge Parkway in this area so I was hoping to find out what was going on. The volunteer at the counter was very apologetic about the closures and said they try to keep the website updated but they have to send their closures to a regional office who is supposed to update the official website. Obviously, this wasn’t working like it’s supposed to. He told me they took at lot of damage from Hurricane Sally and the other storms that came through this area last year and this year. They have a very small budget and have had to close roads and campgrounds until funding is available to make repairs. I mentioned several of the campgrounds I saw had no visible damage, he really didn’t have an answer for that…

Anyway, they were able to tell me the FS roads that were closed in their district. Two of the main FS roads I planned on traveling were closed due to washouts and landslides . They couldn’t tell me about any closures in neighboring districts but were able to give me the district phone numbers for me to call.

I looked at the maps and decided there wasn’t any easy way to circumvent the closures and continue on the route. I decided to head to north GA and stop for the night. I’ll just head home a couple of days early. About 100 road miles later, nice US Highway miles through the mountains, I ended up at Vogel State Park in GA. I had been here years ago with my son with Boy Scouts. I remembered it being a nice campground and it was. I highly recommend site #79 if you are headed through this area and need a place to stop.















I headed home the next day, about 400 highway miles and I was home. Overall it was a good trip and I was glad I did it. I encourage you to attend Overland Expo at least once. It was a very enjoyable time with likeminded people and the training was top notch.

 

Morning John. Have a great day!