Jacked Up, Tail Dragon, Estate Touring Road Trip - Day 2

Thursday morning started out with the intrepid travelers cleaning the dew off of their normally garaged Corvettes, to conform with Tennessee's highway warning signs warning to "Not Drive Dewey" (or was the Drowsy?), in any case the cars were clean for their first leg of the days outing of Chattanooga to Asheville, NC and the Biltmore Estate. At our first stop our leaders had checked on the Biltmore and found that the cost was $60 / person, and that the tour was at least 6 hours which would have put us back in to our evening stop late. So we decided to go and check things out and possibly go to a auto museum that was in Asheville if we could not do much at the estate. We headed back on to the road when after close to 60 miles Jim radioed that his gas gauge read empty and he had just filled up at our stop. Unfortunately at that stop 2 pumps did not shut off correctly, and in Jim's case it had overfilled the tank so much that it triggered the issue. Stopping at another station and opening the gas cap cured the problem. On we went to Asheville and a stop at the McDonalds to have lunch and see it's fireplace and baby grand piano. After McDonalds we headed to the Estate where we could not get very far in with out the day passes. With that the case, we did plan B, which turned out to be very nice. Plan B was the Estes-Winn automotive museum was at the Grovewood grounds. This was a great stop with several different museums and a beautiful park displaying metal artwork. Bill Estes (Judie's Boss) mother was the Estes the museum was named for and Bill had mentioned it to Judie when he heard that she was going to Asheville. It was a good place to go and the price was right as it was free! Once underway again, we had a minor issue when Greg's radio quit at a junction and he got headed away from the rest of the group. It took a bit to get us back together, but we did and headed on our way to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Little did we know that our issues were not done, with Robert & Judie each using their phones for GPS we got to a side road that it said to take off of 19 before getting to the parkway. This turned out to be a bad choice, as it had been recently chipped and sealed, which got fresher as we headed further down the road. Greg finally aborted and we headed back to 19, at which time we figured out that 19 had been the correct way in the first place. Robert (now known as 'Tar Baby') unfortunately had continued on until he actually ran out of road, and also had to turn around. He caught up to us on the parkway where everyone had stopped and done a bit of cleanup to the stones that had been kicked up. Roberts brakes were also hot, and it was decided that his new pads were sticking, it was suggested that he use 3rd or 2nd to use engine braking on the hills, which helped him. From there it was an uneventful trip to our motel in Gatlinburg and our dinner later at Dick's Last Resort for a fun filled evening.

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