Tellico ADV Ride

[KevinB]

This past weekend I went with several buddies (and a few new acquaintances) to Tellico for a 3 day weekend ride.

In our group were 2 BMW GSA's, 2 Honda A/T's, 1 KTM 790 ADV, 1 KTM 890 Duke, and 1 Goldwing. (One rider brought both KTM's).

We had reservations at The Lodge at Tellico...one of the guys had stayed there previously and highly recommended it. It didn't disappoint, and the cost was reasonable (@$110/night). They have nice rooms (each with it's own shower/restroom), a pavilion w/ grill, and a bike garage with keycard access.

Several of us hauled...Tim because he had two bikes (one for the dirt portion, one for the street portion), and a few because we realized at the last minute we didn't have enough knobbies left to do both the round trip and the riding while up there.  One of the GSA's and the Goldwing both made the trip two-up.

We arrived Friday afternoon, unloaded and settled into the rooms, then headed towards Deals Gap via the Skyway. A few had never ridden the area before and were awestruck by the scenery, both on the Skyway and at the Deals Gap store...the store was a circus of car and bike activity.

Tim took his new 890 Duke and led the Dragon rookies through a round-trip (he's a Dragon vet). Myself and Ben decided to forego the circus and rode 28 to Fontana Village and back (and had the road virtually to ourselves).

We arrived back in Tellico via the Skyway again and cranked up the grill.


Saturday I led the group to Bald River Falls for a photo op. From there, we bid farewell to our Goldwing couple as they headed back to B'ham and continued on full-ADV. First leg of the day's loop was a stop at Whigg Meadow, then a trip on the Dirt Cherohala to Little Snowbird towards Porterfield Gap.

We encountered a local on Little Snowbird that apparently wasn't fond of traffic filing past his rotting mobile home, as he was standing at the roadside waving his fist feverishly and yelling as we rode by. About a mile later as we were about to turn onto Porterfield Gap, we passed a large group of @20 dual sports headed the opposite direction. I can only imagine how pissed off he was when they got to him.

The trip over the gap to Andrews was uneventful, and we stopped at a little place called The Burger Basket while in town. The burger, fries and fried mushrooms were delicious.

Originally my plan was to return to TN68 via Joe Brown Hwy., but we were starting to run tight on time and we still wanted to hit Witt Rd. before it started getting dark, so we took pavement back to the north end of Witt Rd.

We had two novices to the road, one being two-up on a GS...I thought, "This might get interesting...and entertaining!".

When we arrived at the widest/deepest creek crossing (#2?), you could see on the banks that the water level was about a foot lower than usual. But what you couldn't see (until after we crossed) was that apparently some strong flooding had washed the bottom out...causing it to be deeper than it appeared.

Ben barreled through first on his GSA, taking the center line. Water came up to the bottom of his tail light. Tim went second, trying a line just right of center...still deep. I decided to go even further right and had water almost to the top of my front wheel. The last two figured out that the best line was to the extreme right, where it was just over a foot deep.

Next up was the infamous rutted crossing. It was challenging for sure, and we almost made it through 100% unscathed (there was another group there that were trying to dry out a sunken KTM 350 with no luck).

Back to the lodge for a shower, then dinner/beer at Iron Works Grill in Tellico (another excellent burger)


Sunday's ride was to McFarland, FS236, the Apalachia power station/suspension bridge, and the "Door To Nowhere" and "Alien Landing Pad".

[KevinB]

Friday...

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Saturday...

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Sunday...

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[Nice Goat]

Great photos!  Wish I could've been there!

[Guidedawg]

It looks like everyone had a great time. Thanks for sharing.

[lazeebum]

How did you get to Fontana Dam? I tried to get there off of 28, but they had it roped off.

[KevinB]

How did you get to Fontana Dam? I tried to get there off of 28, but they had it roped off.

They had the campground side roped off when we went (almost didn't see the cable across the road), but the dam side was open.