Dragon Tales: Day 3: I Find Water

Today was the real Solstice/ Sky road rally and it was alot of fun. We met in the Fontana Resort parking lot this morning and formed up into a flotilla of 60 cars. At 10:30 we took off on a 130 mile adventure through the back roads and high roads of the mountains.

It was a blast driving with so many other people in similar cars. I'm not a Solstice owner of course, but they are a sweeeet little car and their owners seem to be crazy about them ... reminded me of a JEEP owner we know.

The Sky is just the Saturn version of the Solstice by the way.

The organizer dude gave Dave and I those dangling name tags that you hang around your neck. Everybody was wearing theirs ... I only wore mine when it got me free food, I can't stand anything hanging around my neck. Dave's name tag said "Driver" and mine said "Passenger", but after he commented that the car handled better with a passenger in the passenger seat, I took my pen, scratched out "passenger" and wrote in "BALLAST".

"Wacky Convoy"

Like I said, they love their cars, but can you blame them? They handle great and are pretty peppy. The mileage is great too, Dave was getting 3o miles per gallon and we were doing fun mountain driving.

Picture a 130 mile roller coaster. It was that fun. To see our route, go to Dave's site, Thunderdave.blogspot.com. He's going to post the map after I finish using his computer.

Water!!

After the rally was over around 4:00pm, we left the pack and went back along parts of the route to check out some of the scenic beauty that we couldn't stop for during the wagon train of 60 sporty cars.

I was thrilled to find water even if it wasn't salty.

"Zoom!"

The picture above is just a sample of the Skyway vistas we were immersed in for most of the rally. The highest elevation for the rally was about 5400 feet, which is just about 5390 feet above Pure Florida's sandy soil. The skyway was way funner than the tail of the dragon section because you could get some decent speed along the more open curvy roadways. Ol'Dave was grinning for the complete 130 miles as he put his car through it's paces.

I got to take in the scenery ... most of which he missed as he had to concentrate on the road. I swung the camera around a lot and we loaded up with pics.

"Why yes, I am cool. Why do you ask?"

Here's Dave bonding with his car at the first organized rest stop that the group took. When the rest of the cars caught up with us, the entire scenic parking area was filled with Solstices and Skys.



Did I mention the weather was perfect? A little warm for the nonFloridians in the group, but very nice.

Die Kudzu Die!

It wasn't all fun and games of course ...

I was briefly engulfed by the dreaded Kudzu vine, but managed to show it who was boss.

Tomorrow: Home via back roads until we are south of Macon, Georgia and then we'll fly back on I-75.

Back to work Monday for FC.