It was an ambitious road trip, 10 days from Connecticut’s home base with stopovers in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The idea was to bring a Radio Flyer cargo e-bike down to my daughter Maya in Louisville, after spending a blessed four days at Knoxville’s legendary Big Ears music festival—a celebration of everything eclectic.

The Tucson at our Staunton, Virginia stop.

Our steed was a 2025 Hyundai Tucson Limited AWD, bottom-lining at $41,870 with the only extras being the Ultimate Red paint ($470) and carpeted floor mats ($210). It proved the perfect vehicle for the trip, because the Radio Flyer—which is extra long—just fit with the front wheel off. We put a $16 cover on it and hoped (prayed?) no one would steal it during a week on the road.

The Tucson came equipped with a 187-horsepower, 2.5-liter “Smartstream” four-cylinder engine that also delivers 178 pound-feet of torque through an eight-speed shift-by-wire auto. It was a smooth cruiser on the highway, but a bit lacking on passing power. The huge benefit, though, was the 30 mpg it offered on the long highway sections (26 combined). That’s pretty good for a compact SUV. Start/stop technology is helpful. Gas prices vary widely in the South, but we were able to access $2.75 a gallon at one point.

Hyundais come very well equipped, including with the most useful left and right cameras that display with the turn signals. The chromed shifter twists for drive and reverse, which took a bit of accommodation but is ultimately fine. The Tucson has excellent front legroom, and even with the seats extended it doesn’t cut into rear space too much. Heated/cooled seats and heated wheel are standard on this model.

Three hour stretches behind the wheel were not all that fatiguing, making the whole crazy trip feasible. Our first stop, after an AirBNB overnight and Thai food in a downtown Staunton, Virginia Victorian mansion, was Tapoco, North Carolina, on the Tennessee border. Why there? It’s the home not only of the historic Tapoco Lodge, built in 1930 and renovated for modern times, and (right around the corner) the infamous “Tail of the Dragon,” an 11-mile stretch of winding mountain road that features 318 turns.

The hotel was built by the Tallassee Power Company with the original aim of providing a roof for workers at the Cheoah dams and other hydroelectric projects, and it later housed Alcoa workers. The City of Alcoa (what a name!) is up the road, and aluminum smelters tend to locate near cheap sources of power—it takes 10 kilowatts to produce a pound of aluminum. Now you know why Iceland, with its abundant hydro and geothermal, smelts a lot of the metal from bauxite ore.  

Today it’s a comfortable rustic lodge that offers hiking on multiple trails, white water rafting in season, yoga, and glasses of wine by the firepit. The parking lot was interesting. Despite the rural location, with the nearest town 15 miles away, a variety of Porsches nestled next to a veritable Ford dealership of Mustangs. And then there was every possible motorcycle variation.

The Mustang guys get ready for the Dragon.

The Mustang guys were braving the Dragon and socializing in conjunction with a meet in Dolly Parton’s Pigeon Forge (near as the crow flies, but long in mountain driving). One local owner said he does the Dragon once a week.

The Lodge: A river ran through it.

It is perhaps anticlimactic to white knuckle this legendary road in an SUV with a cargo bike sliding around, but it was fun anyway. Caution is not only warranted but necessary—there are sheer drop-offs, and lots of accidents. Check out the Dragon Death Map to sober up before heading down there.

A Lodge breakfast.

From Tapoco (with a stop in Robbinsville, which has a great thrift shop and a surprise Mexican food truck) it was on to Knoxville, about three and a half hours drive. The Big Ears festival (March 27-30 this year) is like no other. It seems simple enough—four days of music with no boundaries between jazz, folk, rock, world and experimental music of all kinds. But it’s exceedingly rare, especially done with the exquisite taste and broad knowledge that Ashley Capps (you may know him from the Bonnaroo extravaganza in nearby Manchester) brings to the table.

Tatiana Hargreaves (left) and Allison DeGroot.

So it was old-time folk with the Magic Tuber String Band and Hargreaves/DeGroot, plus jazz from Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Immanuel Wilkins, electronica from Immersion (featuring ex-Wire man Colin Newman and partner Malka Spigel), and the pioneer of German rock Michael Rother.

Immersion.

A somber note was on March 28, with one of the last performances ever by “freak folk” pioneer Michael Hurley, who died a few days later at home in Oregon. He didn’t look all that well at Big Ears, but he was in fine voice, performing a version of “Delia” I’d never heard him do. He was for 50 years “the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit. He alone was Snock. There is no other.” He was 83.

A last image of Michael Hurley.

In four days, you see a lot of music, at venues scattered all over Knoxville’s very friendly and apparently prosperous downtown. While rents and home buying are sky high in town, it’s still possible to get four sides, corn bread and a draft beer for less than $20 at a barbecue joint on Gay Street.

 Robert Hurst, bassman with the Kris Davis Trio.

Then, the last formal stop was Louisville, Kentucky, home to my daughter Maya and husband Spencer. The Radio Flyer e-bike was still in the back, surviving a dozen lonely parking lots. I rode it up and down the street to make sure it still worked. These cargo bikes are versatile, transporting cargo and kids with a bunch of add-ons. Electric power makes them conquer hills easily. Radio Flyer, by the way, is the Chicago company that makes the little red wagons. Branching out makes sense!

After really tasty shrimp and grits at the in-laws it was back on the road for an epic drive. We stopped for lunch in very rural West Virginia, where poking out from a small roadside junkyard I saw a white Volvo 1800S. How did that get there? While we were at the local diner the proprietor got a call from a slick saleswoman. “She was calling from New York and just hung up on me when I said no!” An opinion about people from New York was cemented forever. 

The final overnight was in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, home to fine thrift stores, one, New Life, run by the Mennonites. I found a beautiful “mid-century modern” 1959 Blaupunkt console radio/record player with a built-in bar on an earlier trip to Chambersburg. It had been used at an officer’s club in Germany. $75! I discovered later that German-market turntables rotate 12 percent slower on American 60-cycle current. But these old mono tube units are happy to run Bluetooth.

The whole trip took 10 days. We arrived home to a very needy cat. Everything worked out, including the Tucson, which delivered 30 mpg on the highway (and that was most of the driving). The experience left me willing to explore other long road journeys across this great country of ours.