We got up and out at 9:00am and rode the Tail of the Dragon-and then we turned around and did it again! We took Route 129 to Joyce Kilmer Road which took us into the Joyce Kilmer woods. We rode up a scenic route and found a geocache. We rode the Cherahola Skyway the opposite way we rode it before and stopped at a bakery and sandwich shop for lunch. We got back on the road and traveled north on 360 but stopped along the way to find another geocache. This one had a travel bug named: "I Heard it Through the Grapevine". We rode the Tail of the Dragon again on our way back to the resort. You can't have too much fun!!

There are at least a couple of people who set up cameras on the Tail of the Dragon to photograph riders who can go to a website later to purchase their pictures. The photographers aren't always there and the first three times we rode the Dragon, they weren't. This time they were set up, but Murphy's Law made sure I got stuck behind a pickup truck and had to slow down just before the curve where they were taking pictures. I'm sure that sounds like a feeble excuse, but that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

killboy.com pictures

We sat in the Fontana Resort lounge after another wonderful dinner to relax and ended up meeting one of the owners, Randy Jordan, and his wife and children, Stone and Storm. They were gathering for the birthday party of one of their sons and had invited all their kinfolk and friends to party with them. They were Jordan family members from the Phillips &Jordan Construction Company; the book we had been reading in the lobby a couple of days earlier. Since we had spent some time reading about them, we were easily able to spend a couple of hours in pleasant and interesting conversations.

We also heard some wild stories from Randy's uncle, one of the company's founders. He told us how he was fishing with another guy years ago when they came upon a mother black bear and two cubs. He told the other guy to ram the boat into the bank at a particular spot. The bears scattered and the mother bear had to choose one cub to follow. He jumped out of the boat, caught the stranded cub and held it until it stopped crying at which point he took it home and keep it as a pet for a while. We confirmed that he had done this with his wife who was sitting nearby. She said that he brought cubs home as pets a few times. He told us many other stories from his ornery younger days, but he obviously had quite a lot of orneriness still left in him. What a character!

Odometer at end of the day = 40061

Miles ridden today = 254