{"id":2107,"date":"2006-10-04T00:02:48","date_gmt":"2006-10-04T04:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2006\/10\/off_the_beaten\/"},"modified":"2006-10-04T00:02:48","modified_gmt":"2006-10-04T04:02:48","slug":"off_the_beaten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2006\/10\/off_the_beaten\/","title":{"rendered":"Off The Beaten Path: Butterfly Gap Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I had a medical appointment in Maryville. Since I was headed down there anyway, I loaded up my bike in hopes of getting a Blount County ride in afterwards.
\nTurn out to be a great call; the weather was fantastic (temperatures in the upper 70s). I had downloaded the cuesheet for this ride<\/a> (my first time), and headed to the Hubbard school.
\nThe first five miles was a nice warm up featuring a few flat stretches amid gently rolling hills. I should say the first seven miles, because I took the wrong entrance to Butterfly Gap Loop Road and thus had bonus riding. Along the way I saw an interesting mixture of some nice (and not so nice) country homes.
\nThen I turned into the woods and hit what a presume is the basis for the name “The Wall”: Butterfly Gap Road. That’s a bugger of a climb; probably the steepest prolonged one I’ve done. I don’t know what the grade is, but it’s noticeably steeper than the Foothills Parkway. To make matters worse, much of it resembles a staircase, with short “landings” between sharp rises. The landings aren’t nearly long enough to catch your breath, what they do is prevent you from developing any sense of a rhythm.
\nI had to stop twice to catch my breath during the climb. It’s not unusual for me to stop when going up a mountain, but most of the time it’s because I’m sweating or want to give my legs a break. Here, I stopped because I was winded. There’s clearly room for improvement on that road next time I’m looking for a challenge.
\nMuch of the way, Butterfly Gap Road (then Flatt Road) is a narrow ribbon of pavement through the woods (incidentally, fall colors are emerging on the mountain). But about 3\/4s(?) of the way up, it goes through the “Top of the World Estates” area. Oddly, though I’ve traveled the Foothills Parkway many times, I’ve never been up the back way before. There’s a “hidden” lake, a retreat, and an assortment of houses and cabins. One can discover neat things while cycling!
\nI finally made it to the Parkway at the intersection with the campground. Since I had done all that climbing, I decided a short trip down the other side to the overlook was warranted. It was worth the extra time. I’m not good at flowery descriptions, but suffice it to say it was beautiful. The sinking “late summer” sun lit up the mountains to the east, while casting an orange-tinted shadows over the hazy ridges to the south. It’s one of those sights I wish I could save in a bottle; sadly, I only had about 10 minutes.
\nFunny thing happened while I was standing there. A pair of motorcyclists drove in and parked in the parking lot. A couple minutes later the guy walks up and asks if I would briefly leave so his female partner could go to her bathroom spot, right by the overlook (apparently, they’d done this before).
\nI said, “OK” (what else am I going to say?). As she is strolling up, he made a comment about there not being female facilities around. I told him of the bathroom at the picnic area (about a mile away).
\n“Yeah,” he acknowledged, as she proceeded to walk to the overlook and do her business. You’d think if they didn’t want to take five mintues to drive over to the bathroom she could at least go in the woods, away<\/em> from where people stand to enjoy the view. But no, she had to go right there. Weird.
\nThe ride down the parkway was fun. Approximately six of the seven miles is downhill, most of which I cruised at 33-35 mph. I passed five cyclists who were making an evening climb. With less than half an hour until sunset, it seemed a little late for that, but perhaps a night ride was in the works. Along the way, I caught glimpses of a half moon rising over the mountains. It was a great evening to be outside.
\nAt the bottom, I took a left. And after a short (but thrilling) stretch on 321, I exited onto Old Walland Highway. An easy spin along the Little River was the perfect cool down from the afternoon climb.
\nAll in all, another great ride.
\nRide stats:
\n33 miles
\n15.7 MPH average
\n2:05:30 riding time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I had a medical appointment in Maryville. Since I was headed down there anyway, I loaded up my bike in hopes of getting a Blount County ride in afterwards. Turn out to be a great call; the weather was fantastic (temperatures in the upper 70s). I had downloaded the cuesheet for this ride […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}