2025 East Coast Rally Official thread

[misterprofessionality]

Ride Day 5   

The final day of this years rally is meant to be a nice and relaxing sendoff, with another Tennessee focused excursion. Since we've spent the entire time so far trying to find exotic and exciting locations and famous roads, I thought it would be a treat to ride around on some of the local country roads right in the back yard of Kingsport. With a sprinkling of local scenery, a Historic downtown, and a really solid river runner, this one was a good time during the test run, though I did do it at about 25mph faster than rally pace, so your level of excitement may vary. 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/5pb4svkDkW3r7FHo6

Right off the bat you can see that the trip for Friday will be a shorter one. I don't want to brutalize everybody after 4-5 days of adventure, so I purposely built this one to be an easy day. We'll come out of Kingsport on the Horton Highway, a road we've used already at this point and take our time picking through the mild curves until we find the first highlight of the ride. A left turn will carry us down Doty Chapel road, which is a remote but well designed farm road crossing the riverlands.  For those of you that remember our rally in Ohio, you'll feel a familiar feeling on this road.  Lots of fun hills, drops, farm lands, and a loose goat here and there.  The turns come up fairly suddenly and keep you awake, but the road itself never feels dangerous or sketchy.  

Doty Chapel will eventually take us down past 351 and drop us right in front of our first rest stop at the G Fellers country store.  This is basically a glorified gas station, but you'll have plenty to drink, toilets, and all that as confirmed by my last visit. We'll rest a short while here before taking the highway westward a short bit to connect with the Main Event.  107 -70 -208 - 212 - 352 sounds complicated but it's basically just one killer road that you can't get lost on. Some of you that have been in this area before may even recognize it as the way to reach the famous Rattler 209 in North Carolina. We won't be going there, however, citing some serious road damage that's still present on the southbound side. Instead we'll turn up a fabulous river runner that will take us through miles and miles of smooth curves all the way up to the Nolichucky River and Erwin, TN.  I practically didn't need to test this route because I've been on it many times with Cytocatlady and SCCBrider. What a stunning ride this one is.  I couldn't let you go home without a little more excitement. 

After another short rest stop in Erwin, and a fuel fill up, we'll continue north on 107 (again? don't ask me how there are two 107's in Tennessee) toward the historic old time town of Jonesborough. We'll cruise right into the downtown main drag, and park near our lunch spot, Buzzed Wings, which seems to me to be a reliable haunt in the area.  There's also any number of small cafes right there within walking distance if you'd like to stroll around town and get something less adulterated. Following lunch we'll make our way north up hwy 83 (another repeat road from this week) and cruise into Kingsport with another Rally behind us.