quote:

You can't take it south from Highlands because it's closed in Pine Mountain, GA.

Pine Mountain GA? over by Columbus, that's no where near the Highlands NC.

Run the Dragon, then go into Robbinsville, take 143 to Stecoah and on to 28 south. the sections between Almond and Franklin makes the Dragon seem like childs play.

Run 28 down to the Highlands and continue south. then over to the Highlands 28 south, into GA then SC, you can take it all the way to 85 if you want if you're coming back to FL... or head over to Clemson, Greenville, etc.

For NC road conditions click the link

Link

And when you zoom in on where it says Pine Mountian, it says this:



Not the first time my map reading skills have been questioned. Typically, it’s my wife as she points in some random direction and says "I feel like that’s North” even though the sun is setting in it’s normal place.

Believe it or not there are two Pine Mountain GA's, the one by Columbus, which is the one that comes up if you google fu it, and the teeny tiny berg on 28 I found using the route map.

Anywho, GDOT has 511ga.org is a site with road information for GA depart of Trans. It doesn't show anything in that Pine Mountain area as closed. But that who area has been hit hard so you best be on alert.

https://511ga.org/

Anyway, are you, or did you run the Dragon?

The county, Rabun, says 106 is closed between Dillard, GA and Highlands, NC, but makes no mention of 28. We may find out the hard way.

We’re about to board the plane.

Hope you have a good trip, I have read where the 129/Dragon is open, they have put up restrictions on large trucks, since GPS is sending them through that route with other roads closed.

If you can get to 28 it's a good run over the mountains into GA/SC if not there are plenty of other routes, the Cherohala Skyway is good, better road surface, not as much in the way of switchbacks and great views with plenty of pull offs for pictures and breaks and when you get to Tellico Plains TN you can hit the Iron Works Grille for lunch. It's a much more pleasant run across the top of the mountains.

https://ironworksgrille.godaddysites.com/

You can also pop into the Charles Hall Museum - an American Heritage place, they have over 200 historical firearms from Muskets to machine guns, military relics from Civil, WW1, WW2, and all kinds of American history.
Link

And so the adventure begins:

I guessed GTI in the other thread, GLI is close enough.
Though, I think I'd be swayed by the DSG in a sporty VW, having driven a GTI with it, it's quite fun & shifts incredibly quickly.

Sweet ride.
Geoloot? That sounds awesome.

I am happy to report SR-28 is in fact open from Walhalla, SC to Highlands, NC. I wish we had more time because I would have liked to wander around Highlands. Really a beautiful part of the country and the drive was phenomenal. The car has a built in performance monitoring app which of course my son kept me apprised of. Apparently, we hit .75Gs at one point.



Buying the car was great except for one hiccup. The dealer said a personal check would be fine, but when we got there, the machine they use to run the checks through wasn’t working. I call my bank to see about a wire transfer and the lady said they could do a temporary increase of the limit on my debit card and it worked. The car is a 2023, had a little under 7,000 miles, and it was close to 30% less than a new one and at least 3k than what I was finding closer to home. Well worth the plane tickets. The dealership was Fred Anderson Kia of Greer, SC. Everything, except the check thing, was as sales guy Larry said it would be. Larry even picked us up at the airport with the car.

We’ve stopped in Robbinsville for the night. We did a portion of SR-28 in the dark and you guys are right, it’s no fun. I had to stop and back up at one point because a semi’s 53’ trailer was completely in my lane.

On a side note, does this part of the country always smell like BBQ?

About the transmission: I’m sure the DSG is great and at the very least it’s not a CVT, but the DSG will be available in the future and the manual will likely not. There’s a couple vehicles I’m kicking myself for not buying when I had the chance. I feel good about this one.

That's a good-looking GLI, trapper. It looks like you and your son are off to a great start... big smile on him!

Enjoy the trip!

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:
Sweet ride.
Geoloot? That sounds awesome.

The picture lost resolution in downsizing it for posting. It actually says "GEOLOGY" which is his major. He joined the wakeboarding club too, so he's not a complete nerd.

The sun is coming up. What nobody mentioned is how much the mountains affect sundown and sunrise. Having spent the last 24 year in Florida, that wasn’t something that crossed my mind.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it! The VW's do pretty good up there. I had a buddy cook his brakes trying to follow me. Good times.

Cherohalla Skyway in vicinity would be easier for a new stick driver and way more scenic.

I drove it last August. It was amazing and has been repaved since then.

My best advice, check the box on Google Maps to avoid interstates about 50 miles away. You will have great drives just to get there. I stayed in Asheville the night before and told google no interstates on the way there, just amazing mountain driving.

And we are back home in Florida. Pics and more story tomorrow.

We rolled out of the hotel fairly early. It was 40 something degrees and I figured the motorcycle folks would wait for it to warm up a bit. We stopped and bought soda and some magnets. I was talking to the nice woman about how we got there and all that, mentioned my son was 18, and she says our total came to $18.81. Spooky.

We got on the road around 8:30 and quickly caught up to a white Kia Telluride who almost immediately utilized one of the many pull offs you guys mentioned. Other than that, we never saw anyone else in our lane. Well except for the two full dress Harley riders going the opposite direction which was fun. They probably had heated seats, grips, and toaster suits. We saw a few cars heading the opposite direction; my son called out what they were as I was busy driving.

We drove it towards TN. The road was newly repaved and perfect. Amazingly so. The car did fantastic, pretty much second gear the whole way, but there wasn’t as much engine braking as I thought there would be, so I had to use the brakes quite a bit. It was a good opportunity to teach my son about setting himself up for the turns, braking, getting on the gas to pull out of the turn, being smooth, etc. Looking through the turns was impossible for some of them with mountain rock faces blocking line of sight. Never had that to contend with at the motorcycle track. According to the car’s performance monitoring app, we hit above .7Gs a lot. The highest my son saw was .79 which coincided with some slight complaint from our all season tires.

We stopped at the TN end by a yellow sign warning of Motorcycle Crashes Next 11 Miles. There was a State Trooper talking to a guy with a C8 that had a big giant wing on it. Which reminds me of the one car we passed that I remember: a white Honda Fit with a big giant wing about the same size as the one on the Corvette. Our car was good, the tires weren’t even warm and there was a faint whiff of brakes being used. Rotors weren’t glazed or funny colors, but we had a blast! It was not busy at all, probably because we went early. So early, only one of the photographers was set up.

We left and headed for home. On a particularly empty stretch of road, I taught him the basics of driving stick. He drove the next 40 miles or so and had me take over when we got to I75. He stalled it a lot at stop signs and lights, so we clearly have more work to do. You guys were right of course, the Dragon is not a road to teach someone to drive stick on, but again, I was joking about that.

Otherwise, I’m happy to report the naysayers were wrong. Driving the Tail of the Dragon could not have gone any better. That 18, $18.81 must have been a good omen.

The drive home was otherwise uneventful. We picked up the minivan from the airport parking lot in St. Pete and made it home by 10pm.

Leaving the hotel before the motorcycle folks (our car is on the other side of the Explorer ST):


We did stop for some scenery, beautiful part of the country:


We did not see any motorcycle crashes:


Great car for my son, once he gets the hang of getting going:

(Mk 7.5 GTI guy here) You picked a great car for your son to drive.

Excellent Father/Son day.

I'm a little surprised by the lesser engine braking.

I figure that one, second gear is really tall (I wound it out in second and hit 68mph before shifting to third) so letting off the gas at 35 or 40 means the engine won’t be spinning that fast and doesn’t slow the car down much. Two, I’m guessing that being turbo charged means it has lower compression that a naturally aspirated engine which would means less engine braking as well.

I just got this from 129photos: