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Scouted Some New Mountain Roads

Messages
27
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6
Location
Lenoir
#1
Like many noobs, I lost track of this forum not long after joining. Lately, I've been getting "back in touch" with my '16 FiST. Last weekend was the longest mountain drive I've taken in the car, after 14 months of ownership.

I must tell you that I have a passion for discovering ?new? driving-worthy mountain roads. Living in the foothills of Southern Appalachia, I get a lot of chances to exercise this wanderlust. Most of the time, the trips are impromptu in nature, and follow some examination of Google Maps, or a tip from someone who knows my passion. A friend recently visited SE Kentucky, and reported some excellent roads. I already had a personal knowledge of some truly amazing roads just west of I-77 in SW Virginia, so I surmised the roads in between must be worth investigation.

I knew Virginia Route 80 from I-81 to US 19 is a wonderful road, so I used that as my eastern limit. Moving west on the map, I found three other very promising roads between there and US 23. This is where the work comes in. I created a map linking these roads, but avoiding too much civilization, straight roads, and poor quality/one-lane roads - at least as I could best determine from Google street views.

From this point I normally commit the route to memory, but this time Google asked if I?d like to send the route to my phone. Certainly! When I opened the route on my phone, the all-powerful Google recognized that portions of the route would lack cell signal, so asked if I wanted to download the route. Absolutely! So, with a confidence I had my whole trip mapped out conveniently on my device, I skipped the memorization part?

Normally, I take my supercharged '93 Miata, because I built the car specifically to thrash in the mountains. But, my Miata is in need of fresh tires, and by the time I decided on which to buy, Tire Rack had sold out. If you run a unusual tire size (245/40/15, in my case), you best ?get ?em while the gettin? is good?. So, I decided this was a good opportunity to get better "bond" with Fiesta.

My buddy James and I met for breakfast at a local dive before heading North to Shady Valley, TN and ?The Snake? (US 421). James just got his 350z back from a complete powerplant upgrade at Soho Motorsports. With the new turbos and built engine, the car is making just over 600whp @ 18psi, on pump gas (dynojet numbers). Here's Soho's blog about the car if you're interested.

Breakfast at Buds.


Shady Valley, TN is located in the middle of ?The Snake?, and this is where we were joined by our friend Curt. So, we were all together and ready - James in his highly modified Nissan 350z, Curt in his modified (for STR autocross) NC Miata, me to lead these quick cars in my little hatchback with the tiny turbocharger. Since my mapped route started here, I went to the saved map, and pressed the ?Start? arrow.

The Snake


Hooray, Google! Google, in its infinite wisdom decided my route was foolishly indirect, and immediately re-routed. Great. Google turned a 5-1/2 hour sojourn through the best backroads on the planet into (?You are on the fastest route?) the automotive equivalent of a commuter flight.

Fortunately, I had emailed the url link to James, and was able to pull that link up on my phone. However, I could not allow it to open in ?Maps?, or it would again re-route. So, I was forced to zoom in on the tiny map in the bottom third of the screen to get each road name. This did not give me any distances, and often the map showed a route number, while the road signs had actual names. Quite a challenge to navigate while driving, for sure.

Continuously making an effort to have the next three road names memorized, we headed toward Virginia, and into the back roads of coal country.

After about 25 miles of what I?ll call ?transfer stages?, we hit our first pleasant surprise: Route 63, between St. Paul and McClure. Along this route, we made a stop (for natural reasons) in a place named Nora. Nora was really just the intersection of Route 63 and Doctor Ralph Stanley Highway. It was here we got a snack and soda, and some sage advice from the woman behind the elevated counter. ?Don?t get lost out here? she cautioned. Psssshhh? We have our phones, and our downloaded route map. We?re fine. 30 minutes later, however?

Downtown Nora, Virginia.


30 minutes later, we were lost.

I wouldn?t say Route 652 (aka Dog Branch Gap) was a bad road ? it was pretty fun, in fact ? but it wasn?t exceptionally "low car friendly". Also, it led us into that area that leaves those white spots on the Verizon coverage maps. And guess what? The Google maps download? Yeah, after the automatic re-route, we weren?t a part of that?

We later found out we were just outside the town of Haysi, though we never actually saw this town. Backtracking on foot a short distance from the wide place where we pulled over, I decided I recognized one of the names on the highway directional sign. We loaded up and we followed the arrow pointing to Clinchco. Later, I discovered we had taken the direct route, and not the route originally intended, but it turned out ok, as the sweeping turns were custom made for the chunky Nissan.

Clinchco offered fuel for the exceptionally thirsty 350z, plus, a tiny bit of cell reception. I was able to look ahead on the map. It turned out we had no pen between three cars with which to make notes, so I memorized the next three turns, and we went on our merry way.

Curt makes a friend in Clinchco.


Some roads look fantastic on the Google Earth view, and the 15 miles of Caney Ridge Road is one of those. However, some areas are much more densely populated than they appear on the satellite view. When we stopped midway through this route, I likened Caney Ridge to The Tail of The Dragon, if the Dragon was placed in the middle of a neighborhood. Where Caney Ridge became less populated moving south, it really was wonderful. I'm quite sure the local "hoonigans" have a blast on this road late at night.

Just three miles of ?transfer stage? from Caney Ridge Road, we turned onto Wise Mountain Road. Wise Mountain becomes Coeburn Mountain Road, and links to Tacoma Mountain Road. These roads are what sports car dreams are made of. Coeburn Mountain is a great hillclimb with some downhill tossed in. In this direction, Tacoma Mountain Road is a steep downhill roller coaster, with hard carving turns bringing to mind skiing the giant slalom. I was hard pressed to resist turning around at the bottom and going back up Tacoma Mountain, but we were very hungry by this time. I can?t wait to go back and try ascending this hill, especially in something with better power-to-weight.

After lunch, we made a couple of correct turns without map access, then missed one. We were on some fun roads, but we ventured far off our intended track. When we finally got cell service, it was a pretty good challenge to get back to our route. But once we did?,

Once we got back on our route ? Nirvana. The Google says Dungannon Road, and the signs we saw said Hanging Rock Parkway. Whatever it?s called, it?s fantastic! Dropping constantly, Hanging Rock Parkway has smooth pavement, along with abundant S bends, hairpins and sweepers. It was also the last time we were remotely near our planned route.

Hanging Rock Parkway


We did not see cell service again until Gate City, well off our route. Getting late, we let the Google take us home, but we made sure to go back via The Snake ? The cherry on top of our Sunday sundae.

Days like this - spent with good friends - in excellent cars - setting the tires on a previously unknown stretch of pavement - these are perfect days. I don't do this as much as used to, nor as much as I should. I plan to change that. I hope this story encourages you to do the same. Now, it's time to crack open a beer, and start planning the next epic trip.

God speed,
Brad
 


Spaceman_Spiff

Active member
Messages
528
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123
Location
JeffCo
#3
Nice write up. I'm in the Ozark foothills, lots of scenery and state parks, but I don't think it's like what you've got available to you there. Think I'll go scout some maps and find somewhere to go this weekend...
 


OP
7
Messages
27
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6
Location
Lenoir
Thread Starter #5
Looks like a blast! Maybe next time make some sort of "meetup" event.
I see you live in Statesville. I work in Statesville. Maybe we can get a run started from there, sometime.
 


jmrtsus

1000 Post Club
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1,521
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Location
Ooltewah
#6
The Southeast has many, many fine roads, Tail of the Dragon, the Snake and other unnamed roads. We are indeed lucky here, plus we have 93 octane non-ethanol available.
 


Messages
170
Likes
41
Location
Miami Beach
#9
Nice write up.....definately inspired me and got me pumped up for a road trip to Tail of the Dragon later in Sept.....for a gathering of RSs and hopefully some other Ford hatches....where I live....we lack fun driving roads.
 


LILIKE16ST

Senior Member
Messages
862
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252
Location
Saltville
#10
This has inspired me very much so. I plan to do a lot more of this myself. I want to try tre tail of the dragon and the snake isn't far from me at all I've cruised down the road in my old svt focus but I wasn't exactly driving spirited I want to go back in the FiST very soon. We are very very lucky to have as many roads as we do available around here there's lots around where I live. I'll find out exact road names and report back most of them have local nicknames that the maps won't find lol
 


LILIKE16ST

Senior Member
Messages
862
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252
Location
Saltville
#11
I just checked out a couple one is between Marion va and sugar grove va on highway 16 and another is between Marion va and rich valley va also on highway 16 those are some pretty good roads and the road that connects poor valley road in saltville va to us 19 is called VA80 W it's a really nice twisty mountain road as well. I'll update with more as I think of them these are all pretty close to where I live.
 


Messages
3
Likes
1
Location
Harrisburg
#12
[cool] [thumb] [driving]

I WISH we had switchbacked 'Snakes' like that around here!

Cool that they named a road after bluegrass legend/icon Ralph Stanley. [:)]
I understand this thread is old but I'm searching driving roads threads before I make a new post. If you make a day out of it you can get to some good...but sometimes rough roads in central and northern Pa. I live outside Harrisburg and am 45-60 minutes from some fun ones. Nothing like what you see out west or down south but better than nothing. This summer I bombed through Caledonia and Michaux on route 233 at 2 a.m. with the top down (s2000) and it was glorious. It wasn't at all curvy but fast and fun. Recently I took my ST to the state parks north and west of Ft Indiantown Gap. I found a few switchbacks that were a blast to storm down.
 


M-Sport fan

9000 Post Club
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13,996
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6,697
Location
Princeton, N.J.
#13
I understand this thread is old but I'm searching driving roads threads before I make a new post. If you make a day out of it you can get to some good...but sometimes rough roads in central and northern Pa. I live outside Harrisburg and am 45-60 minutes from some fun ones. Nothing like what you see out west or down south but better than nothing. This summer I bombed through Caledonia and Michaux on route 233 at 2 a.m. with the top down (s2000) and it was glorious. It wasn't at all curvy but fast and fun. Recently I took my ST to the state parks north and west of Ft Indiantown Gap. I found a few switchbacks that were a blast to storm down.
There ARE some epic single curves in a bunch of the roads around here, VERY local to me, but nothing like the sustained and consistent linked switchbacks like on that Hanging Rock Road in the original thread post above. [:(]

Even parts of NJ 523 and NJ 579, which I use to get to a (somewhat) local to me, lowest V Power price in the area Shell station in 'up-country' Flemington, N.J., have some nice, 'challenging' twisty sections, which are freshly re-paved as a bonus. [thumb]

One day I'd like to make a road trip to the surreal ghost town of Centralia, which was the basis/inspiration for the perpetual mine fire town in the film "Silent Hill".

Also, some of the roads used to get out to the gravel forest stage roads used for STPR (based out of Wellsboro, but going out west of there to the Germania/Galeton/Coudersport area) are 'interesting' as well.
 


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