The Three of the Dragon

You should know you're driving a genuine legend among driving roads — not a local secret, but a bucket-list route that people cross the country to run. In twenty twenty-five the folks at Hagerty, the classic-car people, named the Cherohala Skyway their Road of the Year, and motorcyclists and sports-car drivers have prized it for decades: forty-three miles of smooth, sweeping, high-altitude curves with no traffic lights, no towns, and hardly any traffic. It's a driver's dream.

And here's the local wisdom, if you've got a few days in these mountains: the Skyway is one leg of what riders call the 'Three of the Dragon.' Just north of here is the famous Tail of the Dragon — US-129 at Deals Gap — three hundred and eighteen tight, technical curves crammed into eleven white-knuckle miles. Then there's Moonshiner 28, the old bootleggers' road. And there's this, the Cherohala — the long, high, sweeping one. Put all three together and you've got a figure-eight of the finest pavement in the eastern United States, a full glorious day of driving and never a dull mile. If the Dragon is a sprint, the Cherohala is the grand cruise. Savor it — you're on hallowed asphalt.