General's Highway Rte 198 in SoCal -v- Deal's Gap (The Dragon) TN/SC

[Tom and Vipers]

I drove The Dragon when I was at VOI7 Nashville. I stopped at The Tail of the Dragon and asked if any Vipers have been through. They said no.

I was crushed.

Anyhow, I have to drive Bad Viper from Carson City NV to PA and while surveying maps found General's Highway north of LA.

I've driven the Virginia City Truck Route countless times (even entered The Virginia City Hill Climb once) and it has a few dog bone switch backs.

But GH seems to blow that all away. It looks more like roads in Europe (from the maps I've looked at - never had the pleasure first hand.)

I'm 6 hours from there and am contemplating a specific trip there since it is not along the cross country I'll be doing. (Of course I'm trying to find every interesting road along my way - especially in the Rockies.)

Here are maps of both in the same scale. GH looks like a winner to me.

General's Highway

Deal's Gap

NOTE: I found a real spaghetti road in VA near Roanoke. It could have sworn it ended up in a plateau where there was a Rt or Sr 666 (!)
I don't know if this is the same road but there are a lot of interesting roads in that region.
Here is one to the same scale:
BF Buchannan Highway Rte 16

 

[Allan]

Some good Rockies roads (eastern slope) are Highways 9 -Royal Gorge to Divide,
Highway 12 'Highway of Legends' -Trinidad to La Veta, then 160 to Walsenburg,
Highway 69 -Walsenburg to Westcliffe -visits Bishop's Castle,
Highway 96 -Westcliffe to Custer County line.

These roads are fairly low traffic most of the time, smooth and clean except in snow seasons, and low population of cops.

Highway 50 from Canon City westbound to the state line and on into Utah is a blast, but there are cops and lots more traffic.
Western slope has a lot of killer roads too, but too many cops......

Colorado has some really tight winding roads with beautiful scenery and visible wildlife (deer).
These same roads also have some sections that are wide open spaces with clear visibility for a long ways (for spotting cops and deer), smooth and clean for miles. You can explore the upper triple digit end of the speedometer in these few stretches.

 

[AZTVR]

When are you planning on doing this? Being in the Sierras, I would be concerned about encountering snow or ice at higher elevations. I don't know if that's an issue right now with the drought conditions in CA. I took a trip over there 3 years ago in the summer, and drove that highway and some others (108, 4 ) that cross the Sierras on the northern side of Yosemite. I started to get really tired of curvy roads !!!

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Jim – ‘02 GTS ACR gray/silver -- sold – ( enthusiastic custodian for 8 years )

 

[Mopar Steve]

I have driven both the Blue Ridge Parkway Skyline Drive and the Tail of the Dragon all of those have been awesome but the tail of a dragon was a lot of fun.

 

[HyperViper]

Bring your chains if headed for the Generals Highway to Sequoia National Park this time of year

Was in that area last week and it had snow a couple weeks back. Almost all melted now but with some ice from runoff.