Main Street Rides

There are roads known to many and roads known to few. I have driven my fair share of great roads in both categories in a variety of different cars. One of my favorites being the Pacific Coast Highway, in a Twin Turbo Z. With the fall season fast approaching and the first leaves beginning to turn, I’m just 60 days into owning a 2002 Honda S2000 and Classic Hondas on the Dragon seemed like the perfect event/road trip to check that box on a bucket list car.

As it turned out, a friend I hadn’t seen since college, also an S2000 owner, had made plans to attend the 10th anniversary of Classic Hondas on the Dragon. Afterall, this year is the 25th anniversary of the Honda S2000, making it the featured model at this years event. With the Dragon only four hours away and a friend making the drive from Texas, it was a must do.

With a sales territory that encompasses all 50 states, I was naturally scheduled to be out of town the week of CHD 10 and I had to do some scheduling acrobatics to ensure I could make it to the event. The day before the event, I ended up having been in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, and Knoxville all in the same day. Oh, the marvel of modern day travel.

Traveling across two time zones on Friday, I arrived home in the early afternoon with enough time to pack a new bag to toss in the back of the S2000 before hitting the road, North towards Knoxville, TN. Our college friend Kevin had made it from Austin, TX to Birmingham, AL the night before, trading straight lanes and wide vistas of the Lone Star State for roads that ebb and flow with the landscape. I recommended a few great roads just East of Birmingham for Kevin to kill some time to give me an opportunity to get back from the airport and for my son Bentley to get home from school. Specifically, I advised that Kevin hit the Cheaha mountain roads that lead to the highest point in Alabama.

“This road is incredible”, Kevin texts me. “I know right!?” I reply. Cheaha mountain is a frequent Sunday afternoon drive for me. It covers all the bases for a spirited drive with big sweeping bends, elevation changes, and beautiful scenery. Once you’re on top of the mountain, you can see miles of rolling hills, covered in trees, a colorful scene in October.

While Cheaha is a wonderful road, I can cover more on that later… our quest for the weekend was a one-two punch of a special section of US-129, better known as the Tail of the Dragon, followed by an arguably even better road, the Cherohala Skyway (a name I would butcher all weekend).

After Kevin met up with Bentley and I at our house, we wasted no time getting on the road and heading North to Tennessee. The great thing about North Georgia and Southern Tennessee, is that the drive to the drive is still enjoyable. With our tops down, we wound our way to I-75 grabbing dinner in Dalton, GA, bumping into another S2000 owner (@wineng.grp) whome we recruited to join us at CHD 10 the following day.

After bunking up in Marysville, TN where the show was being held at a local High School, we washed the bugs off our S2K’s before heading over to the show. S2000s at this years Classic Honda’s on the Dragon had their own dedicated lot as the featured model. With over 300 S2000s alone, there were more than 1,000 Honda’s and Acura’s showing out at the event. We spent several hours touring the show and admiring a wide array of cars that ranged from strictly classic to wildly modified.

With what we assumed would be close to 1,000 cars trying to attack the narrow corridor of the Dragon, we exited the show about an hour early to try and get a jump on the crowd. That turned out to be in vain as we pulled up to an accident less than 1/4 mile onto the dragon, a motorcycle had burned a turn and wrecked. Once the accident was clear we were rolling but in a conga line, led by one of the slowest Honda’s at the event, a Fit, and they chose not to utilize any pullouts to let us by. This is no dig on the Honda Fit, they are great cars with a cult following but we would have like to have more pace.

With 318 curves ahead of us in just 11 miles, we still enjoyed the flow of the road and had a few occasions where we had enough space to pick up the pace, enjoying the the cambered corners, a unique experience on a state highway and a feature usually reserved for race tracks. Thankfully for me, this wasn’t my first experience with driving the Tail of the Dragon. I’d done it a couple of years prior in my Nissan 350z at a time with less congestion.

I would like to go back and drive the Dragon again in the S2000 when it’s not being taken over by an event as it’s the type of car perfectly suited for such a compact road. The S2000 is nimble enough to carry speed through the corners and small enough that you don’t have to worry as much about being two close to the double yellows, a dangerous place to be with other cars and particularly motorcyles flying around the often blind corners.

After stopping at Deal’s Gap, grabbing some Dragon swag, and gawking at the Tree of Shame – a place where those that have crashed on the Dragon must display their bent sheetmetal, we continued on to the Cherohala Skyway. The Skyway is a 43-mile roller coaster that trades the tight chicanes of the Dragon for big sweeping turns, gaining 4,500 ft of elevation. We were a couple of weeks early to really be wowed by what must surely be incredible fall colors but we did see just a hint of color starting to turn.

After completing the the daisy chain of grin-inducing asphault, Kevin headed North to Dollywood with his Uncle, and Bentley and I headed South. On the way home we were able to enjoy an additional hour of laugh-out-loud fun in the S2000 and roads that snaked through the hills of Tennessee and North Georgia, including Blue Ridge, where we stopped for Dinner at the fine establishment of Burger King.

The Tail of the Dragon and the Cherohala Skyway are some of the greatest roads that the United States has to offer. Pairing roads like that with a chassis like the S2000 or a Z car and you have a match made in heaven. Bentley and I had a blast cruising with Kevin in our matched pair of S2K’s and we’re looking forward to the next adventure!