Columbus to Barber Festival - 2 day route suggestions?

[Chuck78]

My friends are leaving tomorrow afternoon to go to Barber Vintage Festival in Birmingham Alabama. I may wait for them, or I may leave tomorrow morning early and do a full two days of Scenic riding with some Highway at the beginning and ending.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions of good routes to take down there? There is basically nothing in the way of mountains or any good state routes that go directly that direction other than interstate, with mountains continuously southeast an hour or 3 of the route.

[Chuck78]

If I take interstates, I can basically go directly there S-SW, or I can take 33 to WV & head south on i-77 and jump off and head to Tazewell Virginia. Then I can hit the Back of the Dragon section of Virginia 16 but I have been dying to try for a long time. After Marion Virginia, cut across on some back roads and catch Whitetop Rd and go check out the Whitetop Mountain, I believe the third tallest mountain in the east. From there I can camp after only 7.5 hours riding at Bear Claw Holler Biker Rest Stop & bike shop, or keep going Southwest on US-58 the Mighty Python, and head south out of Damascus, then continue to follow the mountains there. I found a free free campsites down that way and some $10-12 campgrounds. I could then catch a quick half of US441 The Snake, head south more toward Asheville and catch a few good looking roads through Pisgah National Forest and try NC-80 which is not terribly well known but extremely twisty. Come down through Pisgah and catch 197, then maybe take a more direct non-interstate route through the mountains and jump off on the southwestern end of the mountains and slab it 4 more hours. 

 

 

[Chuck78]

To get to US421 The Snake or thereabouts (the real good roads start there and follow the mountains southwesterly) to Tellico Plains at the end of the mountains and the end of the Cherohala Skyway, to ride the best roads within a few hours of Asheville, ****there is basically NO direct express route to that area from Ohio unless I just wanted to go straight toward the US129 Dragon area, which aside from The Moonshiner 28 and the Cherohala Skyway, I am really always trying to avoid the actual Deals Gap US129 Tail of the Dragon. We may go through that area on Monday as a large group, but not on my solo trip. 

 

Looking at Google Maps, I was just blown away that there are 0 interstates really between I-77/I-64/I-79 through WV all the way across a great expanse that goes way over to I-75. Nothing for a day's worth of riding from WV interstates to the interstates that are direct route from Ohio to Alabama... I'm trying to slab it to some of the best stuff in the east, ride thst, then slab it the last 4 hours to AL...

 

Bristol TN/NC may be a better target for Wednesday night, or maybe just book it toward the Dragon area...  hitting that area on the way back, I thought solo the Back if the Dragon /Whitetop Mtn / Mighty Python route may be the better choice there but I'll be camping and riding solo and trying to make it in daylight hours on real long hauls...

 

Wife just left 8am, took the slab and arrived in Birmingham this evening 7pm. She was riding the bike that I told her not to buy, an Evo engine'd 80cid/1337cc Harley FXR... I wrote it last night to test it out for her and determined that a 1971 CB350 Honda was probably faster and more sporty than the 1337cc Harley... I just don't understand those things! If you were to punish me for riding too fast and too aggressively, you could force me to just ride one of those and I would probably stay out of trouble as long as I don't crash it from scraping hard parts too much... grudgingly ride it... they sound cool. And haul large retired couples well (very slowly).

Edited October 5, 2016 by Chuck78

[TheLongWay]

You are a brave sole electing to ride 77 for no reason at all. Horrible highway in my opinion. Now a highway is a highway on a bike but that particular one makes me want to get off and take a train. 

23 south through KY is nice; not busy and just kinda rolls through the foot hills. We took 23 to KY 119 to 25e which will dump you out on the side of the mountain your attempting to get to, but makes for quite a bit of highway. If I was leaving for that area this morning I'd still go 23 to 119 but pick up 160 in Cumberland. Run that to 68 to 606 until 421. At that point 421 to 58 to 70 south. Something along those lines at any rate. It really amounts to a long days ride around 10 hours riding just to get to Hot Springs NC. 

[Chuck78]

Pre-trip bike maintenance ended up taking one more time and then I had allotted, so I hung around and waited for my friend to get off work (it's nice to have a couple riding buddies for a cross-country trek) and let them guide the way. We hit some nice roads at the edge of Daniel Boone National Forest off of I-75, and camped out for the night. Then we took i-75 most of the way down to Barber Motorsports complex, which was substantially better than I-65, which was the faster Interstate option. I-75 was actually a decent Interstate ride starting at Daniel Boone National Forest and basically everywhere south of there. Southern Kentucky was good, and  Western Tennessee scenery on i-75  was much better than I expected from glancing at the Google terrain view maps. Small mountains or large hills, lots of long ridges and beautiful scenery.

 

On the return trip, we headed into NorthWestern Georgia & hit some nice roads on Sunday evening. I don't have any names, as my friend was guiding the way & it was near dusk, so I was mostly just paying attention to the road, watching for critters, & tucking in real low since we did not have any cold weather gear, as it got down to 45 degrees overnight in Georgia! None of us had planned for such cold temperatures after the beautiful early October weather we had been having!

[Tonik]

16 minutes ago, Chuck78 said:

We hit some nice roads at the edge of Daniel Boone National Forest off of I-75

There are easily 2 days of great roads in that area.

[JustinNck1]

When I slab south, I take 77 to Charleston, then 119 to 25E. Both are secondary highways with very little truck traffic.

[Chuck78]

Unfortunately we ended up needing to make a lot better time than any of us had hoped for, so we did good for the time we had I suppose. Next year, if the weather is looking a little bit warmer overnight for early/mid October,  I will plan to spend 1+ days in the Red River Gorge area, and 1+ days in the Cherohala Skyway area. Plan for 3-4 days travel time to get to barber in Leeds (Birmingham Alabama)

[Chuck78]

Unfortunately to get down to that part of the country (Leeds, AL), most of the mountains (ALL of the big fun ones)  are a good bit east, and the only interstates are west or very far west of the mountains, or very far east out of the way, no interstates north and south to take express routes to the really good stuff. Only lots of state routes that are mildly fun but a substantial travel time to each day. With only less than 12 hours of daylight each day, October makes this difficult.

I did note that US-25 crosses paths with I-75 a dozen times north and south, and part of it was named the Cumberland Scenic Highway. That looks promising for a somewhat direct non interstate route, or maybe a route that you could deviate off of a little bit more but still take a nice ride there off the interstate. Any other direct north-south routes are very scarce or convoluted with lots of navigational changes.

 

Another reason we had to take the direct route home was due to tire change negligence... the last 300 miles we were watching my the rear tire carefully on his ZRX1200, as he had worn it completely through the tread and the steel belts of the car just started showing... not prepared for the cold weather, the nasty head cold that I got also deterred me from wanting to deviate much... 45 degrees overnight in the deep south was not something I expected after 80 or 90 degree weather here and there...