Another day of great weather. I decided to explore some of the other roads and mostly stay off the Dragon today. I headed out to the Cherohala Skyway:

While the Skyway isn’t high by western standards (it’s only about a mile high), the road is high enough that in some spots you can see clouds moving across the roadway.

Coming down off the Skyway, I stopped at Bald River Falls, which is a few miles on back roads from the Skyway. This is one of the few waterfalls in the area that you can drive to within sight of the falls – most of the others require a hike of anywhere from 1/4 mile on up from the nearest road: 

If you climb down the trail from the road, you can actually cross stones to the middle of the river and photograph the falls from the base. Unfortunately, the only pair of shoes I have are my driving shoes, which aren’t really optimal for this sort of work.

Here’s the obligatory shot of the Atom and the falls:

Cheoah Dam and its powerhouse are at the Robbinsville end of the Dragon. This is one of the powerhouses I mentioned yesterday, and this dam is also where the famous scene with Harrison Ford in The Fugitive was filmed:

Here’s what the water looks like at the bottom of the dam:

In other news, the rumors I heard about the accident yesterday are apparently true – one rider was killed and another hospitalized in serious condition. Today, as I was driving past Chilhowee Lake, an ambulance came past, heading up the Dragon (this is the other side of the Dragon from where yesterday’s incident happened). The police had the road down to a single lane, directing traffic past the emergency vehicles. Again, best wishes for the rider(s) involved.

The Dragon isn’t usually this deadly. Perhaps it is the small amount of traffic and a few days of good weather after a solid week of rain that’s making people want to go out there and push the limits. Be safe out there – you can always go faster next time as you learn the road.

Update: My Atom made Killboy’s front page again. You can click on the pic for a larger version:

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 6:39 pm and is filed under The Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.