Day: 31
Date: 02/05
City: Centre, Alabama
Miles ridden: 261
Cumulative miles: 1747
When I got up early in the morning, I realised that the GPS had stopped working and that Sigrid forgot her hat at the Italian restaurant we visited last night. Not a real good start to the day!
After packing up all of our stuff, we decided to do the tail of the dragon road with Mike and split up after that.
So we filled up the bikes and started to head towards the tail of the dragon road. After a couple of hundred meters I lost the cap off the pipe on the side of my bike, but Sigrid noticed it. After turning around and picking up the cap, we sped up a bit to catch up with Val, Wombat and Mike. After a while, Val and Wombat stopped. One of the pannier lids had opened. Looks like we have to close our gear a bit more carfully before starting to ride J.

Next we went to the Iron Horse campground. There we met Charlene and John, the owners of the campground:

Both of them ride motorbikes as well and John gave us some tips for when we travel Prudhoe Bay as he was there last year. We talked about our journey and he promised to send us some details of people and places along our way that we might like to see. We also discovered that last night John and Charlene sat near us in the Italian restaurant where Sigrid forgot her hat! Charlene offered to get the hat and send it to us, provided we let her know where we are. That was extremely nice! John took a nice group picture of us too:

 

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We departed and were heading towards the tail of the dragon. After a pleasant ride which I already thought was the tail of the dragon road, we arrived at the starting point of the road ~ a road house.

 

You can buy some interesting petrol at this petrol station too!

We had coffee and something to eat and, after some more pictures, started along the road. It was great fun. We rode it to our abilities and let the professionals pass us on some turn outs. Someone actually warned us that the police would be at the bottom of the road, but Wombat was leading and arrived there a tiny bit faster than expected – 40 in a 30 zone. The police pulled him over but he was lucky and could talk his way out of the fine. We were all happy to have ridden the tail of the dragon: 316 curves in 11 miles.

We continued for a short while with Mike and went our separate ways at a highway stop. We were going direction Birmingham, and after dinner at Mc Donald’s we stopped just 80 miles short of it for the night. We got a cheap motel, the rooms were just ok. As it turned out Val’s shower didn’t drain at all and the internet was not working as well, so not the best place to stop!  Can’t win them all I guess 🙂