TET-S Georgia Section

Owltown rd,, if it was in south Georgia, it would be a great road, but up here, just mediocre.






Never did see Owltown unless that's it in the above photo We stopped for gas at the junction of Owltown &Turniptown rds

This is another road that does make the grade for “Really Good Road”
It's Harpers Creek Road










We have been following the Creek, but the creek ain't no more.. I think at this point the road is the creek. Glad it ain't the wet season..




Larry asked me several times “Are you sure there's no BBB around this road”
I may have accidentally mentioned that there wasn't one,,,, can't be sure.
Larry only tells me the truth when he's caught offguard or can't think of a good lie
so sometimes I may reciprocate


















you can tell by the picture quality that the lense is dusty...






OK, now we got a creek again...

A famous man [Treeman] once said "Quit typing and Ride", so....
Can't post anything else today....

I remember meeting you along the trial on the west side of the Tallulah River.




You asked if we had crossed the river. I said yes, but we had to get someone to tell us where. I asked how was the road behind you. You said it was easy, just a bump or 2. I said the road ahead was the same. We looked at each other and both knew there was some BS going on.

You're right about the BS, Andy
You were talking to Larry, and he ain't told the truth about anything since his mama explained to him what a lie is.

How far did your group go?

John,

We did a big circle ride. Stating in Tellico Plains, TN, through Andrews, NC, over to Dillard, GA, then across GA to Ellijay, GA, then north again to Tellico Plains. We saw some snow and ice where FS 81 intersects with the Cherohala Skyway, spent the night in Helen, and stopped for BBQ at Poole's in Elijay. My guys thought we were going to be stuck forever in the Cohutta Wilderness Area of North Georgia - the dirt roads there go on and on. It was so cold the first day that my camera wouldn't work. I got a few pics of our ride on GA. Here is the link - you will probably recognize most of the roads.

https://andy29847.smugmug.com/Other/NOV-2012-Smokeys/26277544_FWJwgJ

That was a good ride and I do recognize most of them.
Larry and I spent 3 days around Tellico in Oct 2011 and then this trip covered a lot of them
We rode over 400 miles around Tellico and didn't cover 10% of that area.

Edit: recognized most of the photos too,,,,, you just had a better camera than mine..

My memory of the roads covered the rest of this day are kind of a blur, but I remember one that I video'd was the Old CC Camp road. The reason I don't know exactly what roads we're on is that somewhere between the camera, my netbook and the win7 desktop, today's video timestamps were all changed. All other days are correct.

Movin on
It' s beginning to get late, as you can see by the shadows
all the rest of todays shots are between FR 42 and LaFayette Ga.




Camera lense is dusty from all the traffic a while back, so most shots are not real clear









We did run across a hay ride, but they didn't invite us aboard, so we moved on










I do remember this was Lake Marvin rd
The fall colors really shined in the late afternoon sun














Glenda just called and reminded us to “Get our Dumasses to a motel, so we're hotfooting
(or would you call it “hothanding&#8221 it to LaFayette








Oops, Larry lost the back end for a second there,, ,,, ,, ,, I usually manage to drop the bike (and me) at least 1 time on our trips and I had none on this one, I thought he might be trying to help me reach my quota






and we made it

Wow guys,
Nice ride route and great job with the ride report. I live in NW Atlanta and ride the North GA stuff all the time. A few buddies and I were just up around the FS42 and Cooper Creek area this weekend, and with all the rain we've had it was great....on a small bike (DRZ400). LOTS of side roads/trails and dead-ends up there.

I just sold the KLR and now have a Super Tenere, so I LOVE your route as I have been wanting to put something like this together for the big bike. I will INTENTIONALLY remove a few of your sections that I know I do not want to do with the ST - for instance Charlies Creek - I too took a swim in the river - from the direction you guys came, the left side is the deepest, and it appears you both found that out. Also Flatland, especially if it's a rainy day - note if you enter Flatland from the asphalt side there IS a no trespassing sign, but this is not true. The local home owners try to keep the bikes out, but the road is public to the dead-end, where you then enter the FS road - so it IS legal).

There are a bunch more roads in N Ga, TN, NC and AL that I'm sure you would put into your "great" category - we typically make one or maybe two trips up into the Maggie Valley area of NC for tremendous riding (again, small bikes - check out threads for Hurricane Creek - yahoo!!) You guys are close by....ever interested in riding, drop a PM and maybe we can put a ride together.

Again, thanks for the ride report. Great job. Motivating me to sit down with the route and tweak it a bit to better fit my ST desires (I really have no desire to do major off-roading with the ST, though I do have all the required/recommended goodies).

Will keep watching for updates.

Thanks for the comments, I'd love to get back up there again.
It's gettin' more and more difficult to build a good route, with all the locked gates and no trespassing signs.
I use mapsource, google earth, paper maps and online county road maps, and still have trouble.

Sharing our tracks seems to be the best way for all of us to ride the "Really Good Roads"

We didn't go swimming in Tallulah river, but I came close enough, (both feet down) and water was a good bit deeper than my boots.

This is Sunday morning, our last day of this ride and it's overcast and damp when we leave LaFayette heading back to where we left the route a few miles south.

Smith gap rd on way back to route






We pick the route back up on FR252. This road has no steep hills, or any obstacles, except for maybe a little loose gravel in a tight turn, but it really fits perfectly into a Sunday morning ride. Just relax and enjoy the scenery

Here's a google earth shot of the first roads we take from LaFayette
Blue line is route and gray line at top of photo is road from Lafayette


Don't know if I forgot to clean camera lense or if it's the damp air, but picture quality is still leaving a lot to be desired.




Occasionaly, we would see a hunters vehicle. Well,, that could be one more obstacle,, if one of em sees a red/black deer running down the road.




Some of these shots were hazzy enough that I had to add some backlight to try and clear them up.
wish I knew a little more about photo editing,
















When we get to US27, The navigator says I should turn right, but the line on the overlay map shows route going left

here's a google shot of difference in route and the recalc'd route . . TET track is red line and Green line is recalculated route.




Here we're deciding whether to follow track or GPS route... After all, I could have screwed up the overlay map
OK, who do we trust, Garmin or Me,, ,, after a while we decided that even with all mistakes I had made on our trips,
I am still more trustworthy than GARMIN...

Garmin maps shows that FR205 ends (which is why Garmin re-calculated)
anyway, we follow the overlay line

NFR 205 - - Guard rails, something you rarely see on a forest road






This could be why GPS showed road ending, but it's open now




Here we turn onto Jenkins Gap road for a couple miles






And another gate


Now we're gonna be on pavement for several miles
Silver Hill Rd

and then it's Big Texas Valley rd – smooth fairly level road, but this time of year, the scenery is really good.




On this road, you can see for miles and miles. . . If you look close, you can see rain way off in the distance




Then a couple of smaller paved roads


Rain's getting easier to see now.


and then we get back to some Dirt


Esom road - graded county road but lots of pot holes
If you see leaves in the road, dodge em, it might be a well


We may be gettin really close to the rain now..




back on the highway,,, cleaned the camera lense



didn't last long

It rained on us for several miles, but never a really hard rain.


There's some pretty good scenery on this road, but the camera can't get it, 'cause it's RAINING






getting close to Duggar Mountain road & Talladega NF rd500

On Duggar mtn road, run across a new cotton picker


Now they don't just pick cotton, they roll it up and wrap in plastic


continuing on


this is where pavement ends and (I think) that fr500 begins


rest stop










here, we're coming across county road 55,
side note: Larry's been complaining all morning that his clutch cable is about to break..


Now he knows it's about to break, so me, being the really nice guy that I am, suggest that we put in a route for home.
(We have already riden the NF roads up here a couple of times previously, so it's gonna be old stuff.

Now we're headin home


Not saying that Larry's in a hurry to get home but.. … look at my speedometer (speedo's on left)


our route for today

We got home about 4:00PM


One last side note: Larry didn't make it home... He got within 3 miles of his house after leaving my house,
and not only did his cable break, but his Doo-Hickey (counterbalancer tensioner) broke and got into the counter balancer chain,
you can guess the rest of that story. Maybe some higher power was directing traffic that day.
END OF MY STORY...

Should have done the Doo.........................Thats not far from me I wanna learn that route.

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=589118
There's a ritual to go thru, but the route is free
The route we covered was r3, but there's a newer version now

I did last week but have not seen anything yet..................thanks

Dick,
You're doin' these reports like a pro! Enjoyed following along!
Did Larry get everything fixed?

Great route...some really good roads.

Went right by my farm...next time stop in .

Yea, it's all fixed up again