April 2021 – Backward Loops

The Saturday rain forecast kept inching toward 100% while Sunday’s kept inching toward 0%, setting up a real “no-brainer”. So four riders (Mel, Dave, Larry and Dennis) met after Timothy’s early Sunday service and headed to the N GA mountains in glorious pollen-free sunshine. The plan was to ride as much of the Loops as we could fit into a beautiful spring day.

If you look at a map of the N GA mountains, you’ll see a large, green blob N of the metro – the Chattahoochee Natl Forest. The few roads in the forest are… a long east-west road across the top (180) and another across the bottom (19/129). Add four north-south roads (60, 129, 348, and 75) and you get 3 complete “loops” – the finest motorcycle roads in the SE! And best of all… they’re only about an hour and a half N of our fair city.

When riding this area, we commonly approach from the southwest and ride N on 60 to Suches, then E across Wolf Pen Gap. But this time we made a conscious effort to enter the loops a little farther eastward and rode up 129 thru Neels Gap and west across Wolf Pen Gap to lunch at TWO in Suches. From there, all our riding was on wonderful roads, but in the opposite direction we normally ride – backward loops! The highlights were down 60, up 75 thru Unicoi Gap, west across Wolf Pen (big sweepers) and down the Richard Russell scenic highway (aptly named). Very enjoyable!

TWO was very active on this beautiful day. This pic shows about half the bikes present.

It was a beautiful, 260 mile day in the mountains. Join us next time.