Boone Merrick here — pleased to ride along. Now, I've told tales on a lot of pretty roads, but this one's different, so let me say it plain up front: on the Dragon, the driving comes first. I'll hush during the hard stuff and save my stories for the pull-offs and the easy stretches, because the last thing you need in a blind curve is me yammering in your ear.
Here's the deal we'll make. You keep it in your lane, off that double-yellow, and under that thirty-mile limit — and I'll fill the quiet moments with the true, strange, and wonderful history of this gap. And believe me, for eleven miles of pavement, this place holds more story than roads a hundred times its length. Cherokee mountains, a movie leap off a dam, a giant that helped build the atom bomb, and how a nameless back road became a legend called the Dragon.
So drive your ride, and I'll tell it to you a piece at a time. Deal? Deal. Eyes up the road, friend. Here we go.
Photo: William Klos from Mason, US · CC BY 2.0
