Monday, August 17th

We rode to Maryville, TN and had breakfast with Bettie Winters Hall.  It was fun to see her and go back over the years and memories.  After we left her, we found Tangier Outlet Mall where we found some shirts to keep the sunrays off and a Starbucks, first Starbucks since we left Idaho!!  We were headed toward the great Smoky Mountain park when the bike backfired a few times and died. Don was able to get it to the side of the road on an exit and he checked the fuses and decided it was not them. A nice couple from Georgia stopped and although they did not know anything about motorcycles Don decided that it was the battery. They took him back to Pigeon Forge to get a new battery, I stayed with the bike, perfectly safe as cars and even motorcycles whizzed by me. When he put the new battery on the bike started and ran like a charm. It started to rain and I was glad for rain gear, we came back to pigeon Forge and got a motel room for 44 bucks.   We only came 77 miles today so tomorrow we are going to have to get up and leave early and see if we can get farther down the road.