Daniel Graduates Highschool and We Head for the Smokies!

[Tracker]

looks like tiger lilies gone wild

 

[Tourmeister]

No brake levers were harmed in the making of this adventure.

There are other parts that will be getting replaced, purely cosmetic though

 

[Tourmeister]

looks like tiger lilies gone wild

They were all over the place! I'd say they were the most common flower we saw. There were also these bushes that bloom with little white flowers all over them and they were EVERYWHERE and it made the air sweet smelling, especially in towns where people had them in their yards.

 

[tex68w]

It’s a 1920 something. The wife was kind of grumpy so I moved on

That looks like a Bentley 3 Litre Light Open Tourer. They sell for $350-900K in todays money. Must have been an enthusiast club on a rally, pretty cool.

 

[Tourmeister]

That looks like a Bentley 3 Litre Light Open Tourer. They sell for $350-900K in todays money. Must have been an enthusiast club on a rally, pretty cool.

Didn't see any others, just him. There were a considerable number of modern sports cars heading up to the Cherohala Skyway that afternoon. We had the dirt roads pretty much to ourselves for the entire trip with a few exceptions. We saw only handful of other bikes on the back roads.

 

[Tourmeister]

So here is a GPX file that has all of our routes for each day as we actually did them, including numerous missed turns and some fun dead ends. There are also way points that indicate interesting areas, good spots to eat, cool photo ops, etc,... Unfortunately, while riding, I did not do a good job of noting where dirt roads started and ended. Suffice to say, if there is no highway number and just a name like, "Something Creek Rd.", and it is super squiggly, there is a good chance it was dirt. The file has individual tracks for each day. To see them all, you will need to "Right click" and do the "Save as". If you try to use the forum's GPX viewer option, it won't display all of the tracks.

I was running Dunlop Trailmax Raids on my GS. Daniel had the Raid on the rear and a Shinko 804 on the front. The Raids are BY FAR the loudest tires I have ever had on any bike. Tire noise is usually a non issue to me, but these got kind of annoying after a while. I would see people stop what they were doing and look up the road in my direction to see what was coming because they could hear me coming, especially at 50+ mph speeds. I also had a bad front end vibe at 60-65mph, not so bad it interfered with the riding, but bad enough that it was annoying. On the dirt they were fine. They did good in loose rocks, small loose gravel, and even some pretty nasty mud. They seemed to grip well on wet pavement even in cool temps, but I wasn't riding them real hard. On dry pavement, I pushed them hard enough to smell them and they never wiggled or did anything unexpected. Daniel did not have any issues with the Shinko 804 or the rear Raid. We could smell them as well after one particularly enthusiastic section of road... (NC 151).

It is time for me to replace my KLIM Badlands Pro jacket. It rather suddenly decided to no longer be water proof and I was absolutely drenched after 30 minutes of riding in a pretty hard rain. My new pants were fine except that the rain was coming down my torso and getting past the belt line, puddling under my thighs until I stood up and then it ran down into my boots All of the rest of the gear did well, with the exception of my KLIM Krios helmet. It is simply the hottest helmet I have ever used. It fits fairly well, although it creates a serious hot spot right at the front of my forehead no matter how much I try to compress the foam at that spot. I never had any fogging issues with the Pinlock insert. However, I hated having the visor down at all because it got so hot and stuffy. With my Arai XD4, I would crack the visor open slightly to get some air flow if needed. The visor on the Krios will NOT stay in any position except fully closed. Even fully open it kept trying to close on me once we started getting much over 40mph. It was quite annoying.

The new Tractive ESA rear shock on my GS was awesome once I got the settings tweaked. It just made me wish all the more that I had been able to have the new front end shock on there as well. Some of the dirt roads were very harsh because of rocks embedded in the road surface and they created jolting hits on the front end. One day in particular my shoulders, elbows, and wrists were sore by the time we finished the day even though I was making an extra effort to keep my weight off the bars and support my torso with my knees against the tank. The repaired shock arrived at the house the day after we got back from the trip. I am having a hard time getting motivated to go out in the garage to rip the bike apart again to get it installed... I did do a continuity check on it though and it checks out fine.

I think it might be time to upgrade my GPS. I think I bought my Montana 610 back around 2013 or thereabout... It has been super reliable. However, on our big trip last fall when Daniel got that crazy nose bleed in the middle of the freaking desert in Utah, I forgot to cover it while we were stopped on the side of the road and I think it had a heat stroke. For a while it would not even come on. Then once it did come on, it had these vertical stripes on the screen blocking small areas. I was able to finish the trip with it and it never got any worse. It worked fine for this trip, but the stripes are annoying. Also, my eyes have just reached the point where a larger screen would really be nice. I think we did a record number of u-turns on this trip because of turns I missed, some because I was just having fun and not watching the GPS, but a lot because I just could not see which road to take when intersections had multiple roads going off in all directions. I had to zoom WAY in to see them with enough detail to figure out which road to take. Most of the time, I keep it zoomed out a bit so I can see the lay of the land so to speak and keep track of where we are in my head. I've tried the auto-zoom feature and have never really cared for it, but this is the only trip where it really seemed to be a constant problem. Roger had an XT-2 I think. It was nice and big. The work around was to have me zoomed out while Daniel was zoomed way in and we'd confer about which way to turn and when as we went along.

Daniel's bike is going to need some TLC. Most of the damage from his two drops were cosmetic. However, we just went out in the garage yesterday and noticed a puddle of fork oil on the ground under the left fork. It was the right fork that was leaking before we left. We cleaned the seal with a piece of plastic before leaving for the trip and that solved the leak on the right. However, we have no idea exactly how much oil is actually left in the right fork. Now the same is true of the left. We already have new fork seals for it, so I think in the near future we will be pulling the forks apart, flushing them, replacing the seals, and putting in a known amount of oil. He mentioned on the trip that the front end felt much more bouncy than normal, so I suspect the forks are low. Otherwise, his bike seemed to get through the rougher stuff we did with ease, or perhaps his youthful enthusiasm for speed made him ignore the bumps and keep it moving Regardless, he rode it very well on the pavement and in the dirt. It was really fun to let him get out front and them watch him go. He did a great job of riding smart and respecting the roads and conditions.

GPX viewer

 

[Tourmeister]

I've been trying to get Daniel @The Hare to post his pics and vids here in this thread. He has a lot of stuff that I did not get.

 

[SilverBullet]

They were all over the place! I'd say they were the most common flower we saw. There were also these bushes that bloom with little white flowers all over them and they were EVERYWHERE and it made the air sweet smelling, especially in towns where people had them in their yards.

My guess those would be gardenias. Hands down the best smelling plant or flower for me.

 

[KsTeveM]

Thanks for the tracks Scott!! I've never ridden in that part of the world. I sort of have my eye on the area to try and develop a Stevo ride. I just keep adding tracks to my Smoky Mountain file. If anybody has any tips on tracks, ride reports, killer camp spots, cool cabin spots etc. for a week long dirty semi spicy ride, please PM me. I'm like the basking whale shark in collection mode right now.

The below snip....Scott recent tracks are in red, other tracks I've gleaned in that zone are in blue, some SM500 stuff I stumbled onto in green. Plus not pictured I have miles of Hatfield McCoy trails in little clusters a hundred plus miles to the north. It is a spaghetti of stuff to try and figure out. I'm thinking maybe fall next year. I would like to see those trees turning colors as I navigate the roads less traveled. Your tracks....should I beeline for all the sad faces....thinking that means those are fun spots

The GPS thing.....I bought my 610 around the same timeframe as you and in the last month or so it has been acting the fool. First was the power switch flat wore out, rubber dubber deal gave up the ghost. Got a replacement which involved taking a razor blade to the rubber coating and ad hoc gluing the replacement on, like a puzzle piece. Less than impressed with that. Shortly after, the screen on the far right where you can display several fields while the map part is to the left.....those fields starting flashing from their values to blacked out and back. Then I had it on my dash in my truck and I too think it had a heat stroke as it started showing me off track, like out in the ocean somewhere. I got home and pushed new software to it from Garmin Express. It seems stable now....but I know it is probably wishful thinking. I talked with RichardG about his Montana 700 experience he recently sold in favor of a Garmin Tread. It was for the same reasons as you, 610 giving up the ghost with lines and needed a replacement but the 700 series messed with his eyes, too dark of a screen for him. The Tread is cool in that it already comes with good offroad map layers, encouraging. The 700 is more rugged and easier to move around to different bikes.....but I also learned my 610 mounts are not compatible, thanks for that Garmin. During this recent GPS research I also realized that you can finally download digital NF MVUM maps for free to Avenza. I've decided I want a back up to whatever Garmin I have when on big trips, so I bought a Carpuride display, link below, to connect to my phone to be able to use apps for nav. Guess what, Avenza doesn't play with Apple Carplay. Classic. But I have a free version of OnX and it does....and I was able to load Basecamp GPX files into the OnX app as a layer. I have this temporarily mounted on my wife's quad for an upcoming trip....but it will eventually land on my bike to try out in parrallel to a dedicated Garmin GPS. Jury still out on my future nav setup.....sorry to ramble and hijack your thread....just thought it might be helpful. Or someone might help me

Amazon.com

 

[Simmons1]

I have an XT that I love but use it mostly for blacktop rides. It has heat stroked a couple times when I left it on in the sun and not moving at a lunch stop.

I still use my old Montana 600 a lot for local and mostly dirt rides. It has heat stroked a couple times as well leaving it on out in bright sun at a lunch stop.

I have replaced the on off button and that works great now. I got lines in the screen that got progressively worse a couple years ago and I thought about retiring it. I wound up sending it to the Palm Dr and he put a new screen in it for $100. It's like new again.

Even if you get a new GPS it might be worth fixing your 610 to have as a spare.

 

[KsTeveM]

I wound up sending it to the Palm Dr and he put a new screen in it for $100. It's like new again.

Even if you get a new GPS it might be worth fixing your 610 to have as a spare.

I didn't know about the doc, thanks for that. I googled them, located in Mankato Minnesota. Now I am thinking about Little House on the Prairie!! You just never know where an afternoon on TWT will take you

 

[Tourmeister]

I have a lot of other tracks from previous rides out there as well. The problem with trips out there is deciding what NOT to ride so that you can get the routes down to a manageable amount of riding for the time you have. As for the smiley faces... It is not that those spots were particularly bad, they were just spots where we brain farted The harder stuff makes you get more focused. On Day one, Old Bucktown Road and Grassy Gap Road were both in pretty bad condition, from Jeeps/Trucks/SxS tearing them up. On top of being rough, they were very wet from recent rains. So on a big GS I was in FULL concentration mode to keep from dying!

There was the one road that turned into a face slapping single track. Daniel made it to a downed tree we were not going to be able to get around, so we decided to backtrack. I fell over after I had already stopped. Had to be a gravity storm I was just sitting there and all of a sudden I realized I was falling to my left I just casually stepped off and let it go. Roger helped me pick it up. It didn't go over very far though and I could have picked it up without any problem. My only real "get off" was a very slow low side. I was carrying more speed than I wanted coming down hill into a corner on loose gravel. The back tire was locked and I was not scrubbing much speed. By the time I realized this, I was getting deeper into the corner than I wanted and I could feel the panic starting to rise. I started shouting at myself, "TURN THE BIKE! TURN THE BIKE!" This trick has always helped to push that panic reaction back down so I can do what I know I need to do, and it worked this time as well, just a hair too late... The last 18" of the edge of the road was loose gravel about 3/8" to 1/2" in size and about 2" deep. I was almost to the point of standing the bike back up to exit the corner when I hit that and the bike went down in an instant. Fortunately, I was already traveling in a straight line parallel to the edge of the road. Had I gone down sooner, I would have just slid right off the side of the mountain. That would have been... BAD. The mountain sides there are typically quite steep!! It was so steep it would have been difficult for Daniel and Roger to even get down to me and the bike. Getting the bike back to the road would have been impossible without a serious tow cable. This is why we had been riding VERY conservatively all week. This was Day Nine, so I have no doubt fatigue played a part as we were all getting pretty tired.

Daniel's first drop was early in the trip, Day Three. His was just the result of inexperience. He went to lift the front over a big rut while going down hill and was so focused on that rut that he didn't see the next one about 8-10 feet in front of him or the big rock waiting for his front tire! He hit that rock and dislodged it from the road bed. In the process the rear of the bike came up as the front washed out, sending him flying one way as the bike landed on the right and then bounced back to the left side before coming to rest. Fortunately, his speed wasn't high so it was only his ego that was bruised. His only other get off was on that very last day, in very loose and somewhat deep gravel. We had just been talking over the communicator about how Sarah would hate this gravel and we weren't exactly fans of it but we can tolerate it. A few seconds later I heard that unmistakable sound over the communicator and by the time I got my bike stopped I heard him saying, "I'm okay!" He and the bike were fine, again because we were not hauling. Fatigue was definitely an issue this time. We had already been talking about how there is something about the last day of a trip that makes your body think the show is over even though you still have to get where you are going. It doesn't seem to matter if it is a 5 day, 10 day, or 50 day trip. There is just something about the last day that makes it hard to stay focused. In his defense, that road was covered in a fresh and deep layer of that same gravel that got me. It's like riding on marbles and you REALLY have to focus on getting your body position and speed right in the corners.

Most of the forest roads were in very good condition given the rain fall they'd been having for weeks before we arrived and even after we arrived. Like in Colorado, the water rushing down the road carries away the small stuff, leaving ruts and the big rocks behind. Most of the time the ruts were not a problem. Occasionally they would cross the road so we'd have to cross them so we didn't get pinched off at the corners. There were also some places where we had to ride a REALLY narrow line along the edge of the road, maybe 5-10", to avoid the rough stuff and have a clean line. Some people might not be comfortable getting that close to the edge. There were also some surprises, like the corner where I took the picture of Daniel sitting in a rut in the middle of the road. This was right around the backside of a blind corner. Again, riding very conservatively, I was going slow enough coming into the corner that I had time to react and run down the right edge to avoid that giant rut. Daniel must not have been paying attention because he ended up in that big rut even though he was trying to avoid it.

We also had a few turn arounds where I just didn't want to continue with me being on the big GS and not knowing for sure what would happen with the "road". Most of these were already fairly challenging because they were completely unmaintained and had a good bit of mud just getting to the part where it got so bad we made the call to retreat. IF we had all been on 690s like Roger, we might have pushed on just to see where they went. This is true for where I tipped over, even with the downed tree. It was also true for the one with the way point called "Fun Dead End1". There we had missed the turn for Rainbow Creek Road. On the way back, we think we found the turn, but it was iffy and included a pretty good water crossing. We really couldn't see tracks for sure. But it would have been a short distance to explore. The same had been true for the "Muddy Dead End" road on Day Two. We missed a turn. The map shows "Unpaved Road" continuing to Duncan Ridge Road not too far away, but it was getting progressively worse. The actual route was supposed to be Big Grassy Knob road, which should have brought us out on GA 180 after a few squiggly miles. The track for that was barely visible. Way up on the North end of our routes there is a dead end into a trail head off of US 25. I was trying to get down Wolf Creek Road to TN 107 (Round Mountain Road). That dead end had a non motorized sign for the trail. I think if we had approached from the South on Max Patch Rd., we could have gotten to it. I was trying to cut over to where Roger's non-tipover might have happened On a trip in 2012, I got real close to where Max Patch Rd., runs along the border between NC/TN, but we turned South to do Hurricane Creek Rd., which had a LOT of water crossings! On that trip, we crossed I-40 and ran FS-288 up to Mount Sterling Rd. That was a great ride! We did all of Mount Sterling Rd., on this past trip. The only other "Gotcha" I can remember was these ditches, for lack of a better word, that crossed the road when we were coming down Peavins Sneeds Creek Rd., on the last day, just before the waypoint for Daniel's get off. It was a long relatively straight section so we were running a bit faster, maybe 30-35mph, which is FAST for these roads. These ditches were brick lined and shaped like a big V. They were pretty harsh. I can't imagine trying to get through them in a car or typical truck. Hitting them with any real speed would be a guaranteed get off!! As it was, I was able to see them and slow in time. I have no idea why they would put something like that in the road instead of a covered culvert. We did not see them anywhere else.

Here are the tracks from my 2012 and 2019 trip. For the 2012 trip, we based out of Balsam Grove because we were staying at @John Dirt 's Dad's home. Most of us had two bikes, a big bike and a smaller bike. I had a 1200 GS and my 530 EXC at the time. @Rsquared had his 990 Adv and a 450 EXC. I think @Desmo had a 690 Enduro for all of it, maybe a GS? John had a DRZ 400. For the 2019 trip, I was two up with Daniel on my current GS, Roger was on his 690 and his son was on his 1190 Adv. That was a big loop ride where we stayed in a different place each night and tried to avoid the really hard stuff because I was two up with luggage.

If you do like us and start/end the trip in Dalton Georgia, definitely contact Phil "Dualindalton" on Advrider. He is super nice and told us we could park at his place any time and bring friends. He has a big pasture behind his house where we parked and the trucks were basically out of sight. It was easy to get in and out of as well.

GPX viewer

GPX viewer

 

[tex68w]

So here is a GPX file that has all of our routes for each day as we actually did them, including numerous missed turns and some fun dead ends. There are also way points that indicate interesting areas, good spots to eat, cool photo ops, etc,... Unfortunately, while riding, I did not do a good job of noting where dirt roads started and ended. Suffice to say, if there is no highway number and just a name like, "Something Creek Rd.", and it is super squiggly, there is a good chance it was dirt. The file has individual tracks for each day. To see them all, you will need to "Right click" and do the "Save as". If you try to use the forum's GPX viewer option, it won't display all of the tracks.

I was running Dunlop Trailmax Raids on my GS. Daniel had the Raid on the rear and a Shinko 804 on the front. The Raids are BY FAR the loudest tires I have ever had on any bike. Tire noise is usually a non issue to me, but these got kind of annoying after a while. I would see people stop what they were doing and look up the road in my direction to see what was coming because they could hear me coming, especially at 50+ mph speeds. I also had a bad front end vibe at 60-65mph, not so bad it interfered with the riding, but bad enough that it was annoying. On the dirt they were fine. They did good in loose rocks, small loose gravel, and even some pretty nasty mud. They seemed to grip well on wet pavement even in cool temps, but I wasn't riding them real hard. On dry pavement, I pushed them hard enough to smell them and they never wiggled or did anything unexpected. Daniel did not have any issues with the Shinko 804 or the rear Raid. We could smell them as well after one particularly enthusiastic section of road... (NC 151).

It is time for me to replace my KLIM Badlands Pro jacket. It rather suddenly decided to no longer be water proof and I was absolutely drenched after 30 minutes of riding in a pretty hard rain. My new pants were fine except that the rain was coming down my torso and getting past the belt line, puddling under my thighs until I stood up and then it ran down into my boots All of the rest of the gear did well, with the exception of my KLIM Krios helmet. It is simply the hottest helmet I have ever used. It fits fairly well, although it creates a serious hot spot right at the front of my forehead no matter how much I try to compress the foam at that spot. I never had any fogging issues with the Pinlock insert. However, I hated having the visor down at all because it got so hot and stuffy. With my Arai XD4, I would crack the visor open slightly to get some air flow if needed. The visor on the Krios will NOT stay in any position except fully closed. Even fully open it kept trying to close on me once we started getting much over 40mph. It was quite annoying.

The new Tractive ESA rear shock on my GS was awesome once I got the settings tweaked. It just made me wish all the more that I had been able to have the new front end shock on there as well. Some of the dirt roads were very harsh because of rocks embedded in the road surface and they created jolting hits on the front end. One day in particular my shoulders, elbows, and wrists were sore by the time we finished the day even though I was making an extra effort to keep my weight off the bars and support my torso with my knees against the tank. The repaired shock arrived at the house the day after we got back from the trip. I am having a hard time getting motivated to go out in the garage to rip the bike apart again to get it installed... I did do a continuity check on it though and it checks out fine.

I think it might be time to upgrade my GPS. I think I bought my Montana 610 back around 2013 or thereabout... It has been super reliable. However, on our big trip last fall when Daniel got that crazy nose bleed in the middle of the freaking desert in Utah, I forgot to cover it while we were stopped on the side of the road and I think it had a heat stroke. For a while it would not even come on. Then once it did come on, it had these vertical stripes on the screen blocking small areas. I was able to finish the trip with it and it never got any worse. It worked fine for this trip, but the stripes are annoying. Also, my eyes have just reached the point where a larger screen would really be nice. I think we did a record number of u-turns on this trip because of turns I missed, some because I was just having fun and not watching the GPS, but a lot because I just could not see which road to take when intersections had multiple roads going off in all directions. I had to zoom WAY in to see them with enough detail to figure out which road to take. Most of the time, I keep it zoomed out a bit so I can see the lay of the land so to speak and keep track of where we are in my head. I've tried the auto-zoom feature and have never really cared for it, but this is the only trip where it really seemed to be a constant problem. Roger had an XT-2 I think. It was nice and big. The work around was to have me zoomed out while Daniel was zoomed way in and we'd confer about which way to turn and when as we went along.

Daniel's bike is going to need some TLC. Most of the damage from his two drops were cosmetic. However, we just went out in the garage yesterday and noticed a puddle of fork oil on the ground under the left fork. It was the right fork that was leaking before we left. We cleaned the seal with a piece of plastic before leaving for the trip and that solved the leak on the right. However, we have no idea exactly how much oil is actually left in the right fork. Now the same is true of the left. We already have new fork seals for it, so I think in the near future we will be pulling the forks apart, flushing them, replacing the seals, and putting in a known amount of oil. He mentioned on the trip that the front end felt much more bouncy than normal, so I suspect the forks are low. Otherwise, his bike seemed to get through the rougher stuff we did with ease, or perhaps his youthful enthusiasm for speed made him ignore the bumps and keep it moving Regardless, he rode it very well on the pavement and in the dirt. It was really fun to let him get out front and them watch him go. He did a great job of riding smart and respecting the roads and conditions.

GPX viewer

My thoughts on the Klim Krios mirror yours. I had the standard carbon and the Pro models before going back to the XD4. I found it to be hot, the face shield and visor sucked and it simply didn't hold up. I can get a few more years out of my current XD4 but when it's time to replace it I plan to give the new XD5 a look.

In regards to the Garmin XT2 I am a huge fan. I had the original XT prior and the XT2 is better in most respects. The app interface is much improved and there isn't a better GPS screen on the market, I highly suggest them to all who are interested.

 

[KsTeveM]

Thanks Scott!!