On Tuesday, April 16, we took another Day Ride. We’ve ridden through Englewood many times, but never stopped to eat. So today, our destination was lunch at the Tellico Junction Cafe in downtown Englewood. We decided to take a long route there.

We left our home in North Knoxville at 10 am. The skies were partly cloudy and the temperature was 58 degrees. Jeff wore his leather jacket and I wore a leather jacket and light weight chaps.

We took Oak Ridge Highway and stopped for gas. The pumps at the Cargo station were only dripping gas and Type A Jeff was about to blow.

The folks at the station were super nice and we survived the slow fueling. I reminded Jeff to take a deep breath and remember we were out to enjoy the day. Too bad I didn’t get a photo of the look he shot me in return.

We got to Oak Ridge and took 58 South to Kingston. Jeff told me it would be another hour and a half before lunch, so we decided to make a quick stop for crackers at the Weigel’s just outside of Kingston.

After riding through Kingston, we continued south on 58, then took 304 South, which runs parallel to Watts Bar Lake. We stopped for a few photos on the bridge.

We traveled down 304, a beautiful country road with gentle curves and lush scenery. I spied several opportunities to pull off for photos but by the time I got Jeff to notice, he picked this spot for our next photo….

Who doesn’t like to see a photo of an abandoned business? You’ll just have to take my word for it, 304 is a beautiful road. (And to be fair, stopping along any roadway is risky- so better to be safe and wait for a good pull off. Thanks Jeff for taking such good care of us!)

We rode 304 South to 68 and took 68 West for about a mile.

Then we got back on 304 South heading toward Decatur.

In Decatur, we took 30 South heading toward Athens.

In jest, Type A Jeff picked up a boulder to poke fun at my desire to take pictures of everything in sight. It only seems fitting to include that one in this post.

We rode through Athens, got lost briefly, and stopped to shed some clothes. It had warmed up nicely into the 70’s.

On the south end of Athens, we took 39 which took us right into Englewood. We pulled into the Tellico Junction Cafe at 1:30 pm. Stop in next time you are in Englewood!

After lunch, we took 39 South.

Beautiful and winding, 39 brought us out on 68 just north of Tellico Plains. We took 68 North to Madisonville, stopped to top off our tanks, then continued north on 411 through Vonore and onto Maryville. We rode Alcoa Highway back to Knoxville, rode through downtown and then back home.

We had a great ride. We were on the bikes, in the sunshine and we were together. It doesn’t get any better than that!

We arrived home around 4pm and our total ride was 187 miles.

You can view our entire list of DAY RIDES by CLICKING HERE.