Near the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway the road runs close to the small city of Asheville North Carolina. We had been hoping to get to Asheville by the weekend of 2-5  October. Our friends Ken and Carol Duval had told us about the Overland Expo East which  was to take place on a property near the town. They intended to give several presentations  over the four days and asked if we could make it. The trouble was, we were in British  Columbia at the time, about 3 000 km north west. We decided that it would be only a remote  possibility and responded that we would do the best we could.

Well, we didn't quite make the distance, arriving a day late for Ken and Carol's main presentation, but we did roll up on a freezing Saturday. It was not a bad effort considering the distance we had covered to get there. We had also managed to get Elephant re-tyred on the  way down, much to my relief after riding the Blue Ridge Parkway on a knobby rear tyre that was as bald as a badger's bum. We had a chance for a quick catch-up with the Duvals, a chat with some other overlanders and an inspection of some of the new hardware on offer from the  many traders with stands. It is amazing how much money some folk can spend to rough-it. One small all-terrain camper we looked at was nearly $US300K. As always, we were looking for ideas not things to buy.

One new acquaintance was a young Australian, Alistair Farland, who was on his way south on a transit of the Americas. Ten days later, in northern Arkansas, we heard the news that Alistair had been killed in a collision. Even here in the US, where driving conditions are relatively benign, riding a bike is always a risky business. Alistair had that wonderful sense of curiosity that marks out the true “voyageur” and the news of his death was a great sadness.

We detoured a little from the Parkway south of Asheville to the small town of Maggie Valley NC. This otherwise unremarkable town is home to an amazing place of pilgrimage for serious bike riders. The Wheels Through Time Museum is much more than a motorcycle museum. It is certainly a fine collection of American motorcycles, but there are several other collections of merit. The bikes are also well presented but like many displays there are so many machines that they are a little too crowded for best inspection. No, what makes Maggie Valley's WTM such an amazing experience is that the machines are not restored to museum quality, they are, instead, all restored to run. Many have a most wonderful patina and when they fire up it is a very special experience.

When we pulled up outside, the curator and driving force behind the collection, Dale Walksler, was out to introduce himself in a flash. When he heard our story we were immediately invited in as his guests and he set out showing off some of the exhibits that he knew would interest us. It is one thing to see a 1913 Indian board track racer in perfect running order. It is entirely another experience to hear it fire up and run! Non-bikers will wonder what all this enthusiasm is about.

You will just have to accept my word that we had already had a very good day when we were invited to have a barbecue meal with the Vincent Club which was having its annual rally in Maggie Valley that week. I was quickly lost in conversation with two fellows who each owned two Vincent Black Shadows and an Egli Vincent (this is the bike equivalent of owning two original Degas and a Freud). Meanwhile, Jo was getting the life story of Charlie who made his living riding an Indian Scout on the Wall of Death at county fairs. Some days are priceless.

Maggie Valley left us in a good mood as we rode the last of the Parkway and headed into the Smoky Mountains. We rode some of the interesting roads in drizzly weather. The most notable of these is called the Tail of the Dragon and is something of a motorcycle legend in the US. It has 318 curves in 11 miles which is unusual in an American road. These master road builders don't usually stand for such things. Folks come from all over the country to ride it. Many, unbelievably, trailer their bikes to one end, do the ride up and back just to say they have “slayed the Dragon”. As it turned out we were lucky the weather was poor and the road was wet as this kept some of the hopeless riders away. We still had to blow-by a half dozen slow bikes of a particular US type. Some riders were so shaky on their machines Jo worried they might lose control as we slipped by. I didn't think this was likely although the Elephant riding around the outside on a tight bend is, I guess, a little surprising for some.

A ride down the main street of the honey-pot town Gatlinburg TN was enough to finish us with the Smoky Mountains and we rode east towards the Atlantic coast and Charleston SC without much regret. We were off to have a few days with a friend we had first met nine years ago in a small village on the edge of the Sahara in Tunisia.

Our Charleston detour made us quickly realise that we had travelled over 1000 miles south down the US without leaving the national parks or state forests except to sleep and eat. As we plunged into South Carolina, also known as the buckle on the Bible Belt, we realised that we had arrived in a different USA. This was a USA of extremes and contrasts. A place of aerospace manufacturing and villages of demountable houses; of luxurious mansions and Southern Baptist Churches; of fried chicken and grits and sumptuous golf courses; of luxurious gated communities cosseted by the detritus of poverty, catfish dinners and fried chicken. Suddenly we were having fun again.