And while the topic of riding in East Tennessee is on my mind, here's some interesting and good news...
The Knoxville News-Sentinel is announcing this morning that an additional section of the Foothills Parkway is closer to being completed. The Federal government has announced that a $10 million transportation grant will be funded and will be matched by $15 million from the state of Tennessee and $10 million from the National Park Service. This money will go to complete the section of the Foothills Parkway running from Walland at US321, just up the road from Townsend, to Wears Valley near Pigeon Forge.
I can think of a lot of places I'd like to avoid, and Pigeon Forge is one of those. But this section includes a number of miles that are already graded and ready to be paved as well as the "missing link". The "missing link" is a 1.65 mile section that, according to local folklore, got missed during the initial surveying. Preparation and grading was begun from Walland and from Wears Valley and they two sections were supposed to meet. However, they didn't. The 1.65 mile missing link turned out to be an incredibly rugged section of the mountains, and it's going to require 9 bridges to connect the already prepped sections.
When all of this is completed in 2018 (not that far away, but it is just the projected completion date), the Foothills Parkway will run from US129 all the way to near Pigeon Forge, and will total nearly 40 miles. 40 miles of beautiful and curvy roads is a GOOD thing in my book.
The new section of the Foothills Parkway will probably pick up some traffic from folks wanting to bypass Townsend, but that's ok too. US321 between Pigeon Forge and Townsend is a pretty nice road that is, unfortunately, pretty traffic choked right now.
If a person happened to be in Townsend for, let's say a motorcycle club get together, a pretty amazing ride would be to take the Foothills Parkway to US129, ride through Deal's Gap into Robbinsville, go over the Cherohala Skyway to Tellico Plains, ride TN360 and TN72 back to US129 to the Foothills Parkway and all the way to Wears Valley, and then turn around and redo that new section of the Parkway to US321 and back to Townsend. That would be one of the finest 195 mile rides ANYWHERE. And that's only one option. There are other roads that parallel some of those roads that could eliminate some of the backtracking if desired (Happy Valley off US129, East Millers Cove, and more). Holy komoly...my mouth is watering!