Day three!

Tail of the Dragon
Oooh!! So exciting. Corey is like a little kid at a candy stand. The Tail of the Dragon is a stretch of road in Deals Gap that has 318 turns in 11 miles. It is famous among motorcyclists who flock from all over the country to try their hand at the most insane course ever. These guys come around corners with their knee pads scraping the pavement, it is insane! A lot of people just come to enjoy the insane drive it is without going at breakneck speed. This of course, could not be us. I swallowed everything I believe about safety and smiled and said, “Ok. Let’s do it.”
I don’t really know how to explain the experience of the ‘drive’. It was a little like a roller coaster, with flashes of Corey cackling like a madman. We were on 3 wheels almost the whole time and you never even had time to see the drop-off of the mountain you were heading towards before another one arrived around turns that gave up only another 180 turn at 50 miles an hour. Corey was tailing some crotch rocket’s without missing a beat and thought it was hilarious. I mean really. Imagine you’re on a sport bike zooming along, and a beat up old Fox wagon who’s crumpled to all hell comes up right on your ass. He was proud. Everyone was pulled off at the end of the tail and the motorcyclists we had tailed for the ride came up laughing saying they couldn’t believe the car handled that well. We glowed with pride. One more little stretch down the road and we found the Canadian team and a few others teeing off on top of the Accord. We pulled over and to everyone’s delight our brakes continued to smoke for a good five minutes.
After trading war stories of the dragon we were off again, this time convoying with the crazy Canadians. They are much better equipped than our car with our paper maps. Almost everyone on this trip have amazing cameras, gps, and some sort of internet capable phone. I guess we’re riding old school which is just fine with us, though we are seeing the advantages of their ways. Well, the Canadians decided to take us further off the recommended route (which was already half gravel roads up and down mountains) without consulting with us. I’d given up looking at the maps to enjoy the scenery so we were just following them blindly. Well, what they thought was going to be a 45 minute scenic detour actually ended up taking at least an hour and a half all the way to the top of a mountain. Ha ha. I’m telling you, these Canadians are nuts! It ended up being completely gorgeous and we were all happy to have done it, but there were a few moments where we all thought we might be spending the evening with the bears. Plus, when we made it to the hotel parking lot we got mad props for all looking as though we had been off-roading in our cars while everyone else's looked pristine. Sweet!
Tailgating party as usual ensued with lots of beers, stories, and shenanigans. We learned how to play Stump, and saw one of the more wasted guys of a team change into the sexy little astronaut dress one of the girl teammates had been wearing and then parade around literally picking up random men. Ha ha.
Oh, the only challenge today was to try the tail of the dragon and the suggested route to the hotel. Normally it would have taken only a couple hours to get the hotel from our previous stop but most of us took the 6 hour route and didn’t regret it. It worked out that the shortcut was there though, because of the large number of cars having problems. The matador actually blew both head gaskets and was able to find replacements and replace them in the parking lot and still make it to the hotel for the party that evening. Very cool.