The Tail of the Dragon
After having driven the main road through the Great Smoky Mountains innumerable times to get to various hikes, Ian and I thought it would be nice to take a different road back to North Carolina from Tennessee. I knew there was a forest "next door" to the Smokies, and suggested we take the road through there. Zooming in on the map, we saw that the road was a bit windy, but it didn't look much worse than the other mountain roads we'd been on.
As we entered the Nantahala National Forest, the road became windier and windier. Whereas in the Smokies, we'd felt comfortable driving the 45mph speed limit, going over 20mph on this road made me feel instantly sick. Ian drove a heroic 15mph through most of the park, trying to keep us alive and me from vomiting.
About a half hour in, we stopped at a pull-off. There were three souped up sports cars already there, and a group of 7 or so young guys with walkie talkies. As we pulled in, one of the sports cars abruptly drove off the way we'd come. As we admired the overlook, we heard the leader of the 7 guys shout "30 seconds!" into his walkie talkie, and saw the car shoot back past us on the road. We were somewhat amused and somewhat horrified - we couldn't imagine driving that fast around these insane curves!
Back on the road, Ian and I noticed a man sitting in a foldable porch chair under a collapsible rain hut that said "Killboy." He had a telephoto lens, and aimed it at our car! We were deeply confused. A little farther down the road, there was another man with a camera in a hut that read "129Slayer." What on earth was going on?
We slowly put together the picture: people drove this road to careen around curves at top speed in souped up sports cars! When we got to the other side of the forest (I made it without puking! Ian is a hero!), we looked it up, and indeed this section of road is called the Tail of the Dragon, and is the number one destination for car and motorcycle racing enthusiasts to test the limits of their vehicles in the USA! Sure enough, there are photos of us driving our clunky SUV with NJ plates at 15mph on killboy.com and 129slayer.com. I think Ian deserves a T-shirt that says, "I drove the tail of the dragon!" and I should have one that says "and I didn't puke!"
