Robbinsville is a quiet mountain county seat of fewer than six hundred people, and for a lot of riders it is the stop where a very good day gets summed up. It lies at about 620 metres in western North Carolina, in Graham County, one of the least populated corners of the state, and it makes a convenient place to finish or to start because it has fuel and a few places to eat, which the mountains around it do not.
The two famous roads meet nearby. The Cherohala Skyway climbs out of here toward the Tennessee line, a forty-three mile ribbon of tarmac that took over three decades to build and opened in 1996. Its name stitches together Cherokee and Nantahala, the two national forests it crosses, and it tops out above five thousand feet in wide, open ridge country with long sweepers and few trucks. A short ride south sits Deals Gap and US 129 at Deals Gap, eleven miles of US 129 with 318 curves, which is why the parking lot at the bottom looks like a motorcycle show. Between them they make the best two-road day in the Southeast.
Robbinsville has more depth than the traffic past it suggests. Chief Junaluska, a Cherokee leader who fought alongside Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend and later watched his people driven west on the Trail of Tears, asked to be buried in the hills and his grave lies here. Lake Santeetlah curls through the forested valley to the north, and beyond it is Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, a stand of old growth tulip poplars so tall and wide that walking beneath them feels like being in a church.
For the rider, the practical advice is easy. Fill the tank, buy a coffee, and pack a layer, since the temperature on the ridge can sit ten degrees lower than in the town. Wet leaves and gravel hide on the shaded bends, and deer are everywhere at dusk. October brings the colour, but summer mornings, with mist lifting off the lake, are lovely too.