The Dragon gets all the glory — but you're rolling through some of the finest riding country in America, and this is only the most famous piece of it. Nearby runs the Cherohala Skyway, the Dragon's big, sweeping cousin. Where the Dragon is tight and frantic down in the gorge, the Cherohala is a thirty-six-mile ribbon that climbs way up onto the high ridges — long, flowing, wide-open curves with hundred-mile views off the top of the world. It cost over a hundred million dollars to build and didn't open until nineteen ninety-six, and plenty of riders will tell you it's every bit the Dragon's equal, just a completely different joy. The Dragon makes your heart pound; the Cherohala makes it soar.
Put the two together with Moonshiner 28 — that's North Carolina 28, down at Deals Gap — and you've got the loop the locals call the Three of the Dragon: a great figure-eight of legendary pavement you could spend a whole glorious day on without touching a dull mile. The Dragon's the headliner, the one everybody's heard of. But the mountains around it are absolutely stitched with roads that'll make you grin, so don't be in a hurry to leave.
Photo: Brian Stansberry · CC BY 3.0
