The last couple weeks in Tennessee SW of Knoxville have given us great weather. Amazing top down where the its sunny but then cool enough so that even out in the open driving an MGB is nice!!

Although we have a very active club here (Blount British Car Club) we have found a number of our neighbour's driving their B's. There are now 7 of these transplants (5 from Illinois with 2 who were the Chicagoland Club) almost close enough to throw a rock at.

Friends Todd ('79 B) and Laura stopped by last Saturday to chat and Todd mentioned taking his Sunday drive in the B. I said "can I come"? Then it hit me - let's get the guys together and convoy. 2 of our 7 were out of town but the other 5 said "hell, yeah" and so Sunday morning everyone met at my place and we took off.


Todd - 1979 MGB; Doug - 1967 MGB; David and Fred both drove 1980 LE’s; Ralph drove his Mongrel - 1972 MGB

Some of the guys had never met each other so this was our first real get-to-know session. With a map you can follow our little tour from TN 411in Vonore to TN 72 to TN 129 to the Foothills Parkway and back via TN 321. The drive took us about 3 hours round trip with a couple of stops to check out scenery.

The Foothills Parkway is a scenic over the mountains drive with many vista and overlooks. It's a bit of a hill climb to get up there but no overheating occurred. The MGs ran fine!


TN 129 will take one to the famous Tail of the Dragon which sports 318 curves in 11 miles and is visited by many folks trying their hands in taming that Dragon. For us, we took a rest stop to chat and get to know each better and then exited before the "Tail" onto the Foothills Parkway.

As one might expect the overlooks of the Smoky Mountains are awesome and we actually stopped a few times as some of our group who are new arrivals had never driven this road before.

When we finished we all said it was a lot of fun and that we must do it again. Meeting and getting new MG people and more great little MG cars is always a positive experience. Doing this is a place as beautiful as the Smokey's makes it even better.

Maybe next time we'll let the girls come??

~~ Ralph Arata