The W. Va. Cardinal

US-129 Deal's Gap - The Dragon - The Tail of the Dragon!

       We road this Gap/Dragon Sixteen times (16), yes that’s right, only Sixteen (16) times, in the last two years, so this does not make me an authority of any kind on this road, just a casual observer with an opinion, as we all have, but to be honest with you this road is very overrated and there are plenty of roads just as good if not much better roads in mountains of Western Virginia, most all of roads in West Virginia, Western North Carolina, Western South Carolina and North Western Georgia, that are just as twisty or more so than US-129 with much, much better scenery and a fifty five (55) miles-an-hour speed limit.

More and better pictures and hopefully a video will come next spring.

Heading South just before you turn down the hill to go to the Resort.

         To give you some idea of just how congested The Dragon stays most of the time, please look at the fourth picture on this page, and then the picture below.. this is a normal day on the Dragon. I have found it much better than this as you will see in my videos.

         This picture below is a picture that Dick took while we were on The Dragon and as you can see where everyone has to flowing in a close line that we weren’t even able to get up to the legal speed limit, the speedometer says were just doing about 32 MPHs. That means about 28 MPHs GPS. (Very exciting. Huh?) As you can also see, I didn't even get going fast enough around the curves to spill his M&Ms either. Yep the bag was open also, and he was eating them as we drove The Dragon.

         Ole yeah, if you look at the NAV system it tells you that we are in fact on US-129 going South, and if you enlarge the picture you can also tell from the map that we are in fact on The Dragon for sure.

         Honest, I'm not trying to tear down the mystique of The Gap or The Dragon by any means, it's not the road or the people that live around there fault, go there and try to enjoy yourself and be very, vary careful, and I say this because, there are way to many people on this road most of the time and it has way to low of a speed limit thanks to the THP.

         Someone must have read my post on here last year about the poor condition of those road, because this spring when I went down to play it was in very good condition. It was better marked, no pot holes clean curves and more pull offs that were paved, nice job..

        For safety sake and the speed limits should be put up to 45 in the curves, yes there are two curves that should stay at 35 and 50 or 55 in the straightaways, this would make it a much more safer road to run and have some real safe fun on.

         The THP could still have lots of fun and get all the money they want or need off of the rockets and the few GL1800s and those that think they are on some kind of race course.

         Please if you do nothing else, please listen to me now, this is very important to you.

        On the average day, there are way to many bikers (rockets mostly& Harleys) on this road at any given time.

 Most of the Harleys will be going to slow and most of the rockets will be trying to make a race track out of it. And somewhere in the middle you will be going somewhere around the speed limit 30, even if you can't maintain the 30mph limit because of someone in front of you, or your skill level in the twisties is just not up there yet, there will be someone that will want to do even more, 40, 45, 50* MPHs and higher and please be assured, THEY WILL PASS YOU, when you least expect it, on a strait away or in a curve, in a heart beat, they don't care about you at all, they don't care about your driving experience and they don't even care if you are doing 50 MPHs THEY WILL PASS YOU, and if you don't see them coming and again a lot of the time you will be concentrating on what your doing yourself and don't even know they're on your inside and sometimes outside, until they're up beside of you, you will maybe get into a wreck with them or be pushed into someone else because of them.

       Here are some pictures of me on the Dragon on a light traffic day and having a ball. If you check out my Dragon Video page you will see the videos that were taken on the same day that these pictures were taken.

        If, you have never been on a good curvy road before, this is a real good starting point for you, but if you have a little more experience with good curves switchbacks and elevation changes and you want to let the ponies loose for them to get some exercise for a wile. Ya might want to go some where else to ride.