When Max Clavijo, a member of the tour committee, suggested we do a tour using the route of the Appalachian Highlands Scenic Byway, my first thought was somewhere in North Carolina. Turned out that was incorrect. In fact, it turned out to be in the opposite direction. The byway runs from Heflin, AL to Fort Payne, AL and goes right by Little River Canyon, which has a beautiful waterfall with a deep canyon just west of the falls. The byway doesn’t actually get into the deep canyon, but it is over 500 feet deep just a mile of so below the falls.

So, with a good route chosen we set a nice springtime date that should allow good weather and a chance to drive a nice long route in our Porsches. 29 cars were signed up for the tour. Sign-in was set for 8:30 at the parking lot of the remote campus of Mercer University just off Thornton Road and I-20. As luck would have it that turned out to be the morning that the highway department decided to change the I-400 interchange. This caused a few folks to almost panic thinking they were not going to be able to get to sign-in before we departed. Happily they persevered and made it. One of these couples was actually coming to the tour to celebrate their anniversary. Now that’s what I call a dedicated Porsche enthusiast. At sign-in I asked how many people were on their first Peachstate PCA tour and was surprised to see almost 80% raise their hands. It is a great way to get involved in Peachstate.

The weather was great and a number of the cabriolets had the top down as we drove to Fort Payne, where we had lunch at the Santa Fe Cattle Company. They set aside a separate dining area just for our group and the service and food was excellent. This provided a great opportunity to socialize and make new friends.

After lunch we drove back to Adairsville via Valley Head; AL, Mentone, Al; Menlo, GA; and Summerville, GA. From there everyone was on their own to go home with most taking I-75 back towards Atlanta.

I especially want to thank the volunteer leads and sweeps who helped make this tour a success:

David Cruickshanks, Vince Spatafora, Bill Edwards, Gary Studenic and Jeff O’Reilly. We always need more volunteers for future tours so if you are interested please contact me so I can call on you in the future. You can e-mail me here.