Tour de Steam Plume

[BlimeyCabrio]

This is my current favorite 1 hour motor from where I live in Holly Springs. About 45 miles round trip from my house. The loop shown is about 41 miles and goes completely around Shearon Harris nuclear plant and associated land/lake. You see umpteen sirens and you're in sight of the cooling tower steam plume almost the entire drive. Only about 4 miles of it goes through any residential congestion, a 4 miles stretch of straight old US-1, and the rest are marvelous low traffic twisties...

Thanks to Hets for pointing me to the main elements of this route! And to Dan for turning me onto the latest version of Yahoo Maps - still takes some manual editing / cut / paste / conversion - but works pretty well!

Tour de Steam Plume - Starts and Ends in Holly Springs, NC

Starting on NEW HILL RD going toward IRVING PKY - go 0.3 mi
Turn RIGHT on OLD HOLLY SPRINGS APEXRD - go 1.6 mi
Turn LEFT on WOODS CREEK RD - go 2.4 mi
Turn LEFT on FRIENDSHIP RD - go 2.3 mi
Turn LEFT on NEW HILL HOLLEMAN RD - go 0.9 mi
Turn RIGHT on SHEARON HARRIS RD - go 3.9 mi
Turn LEFT on OLD US ONE HWY - go 1.9 mi
Continue on OLD US-1 - go 2.0 mi
Turn LEFT on CHRISTIAN RD - go 5.0 mi
Continue on NC-1912 - go 0.2 mi
Turn LEFT on AVENT FERRY RD[NC-42] - go 8.4 mi
Turn LEFT on COKESBURY RD - go 3.4 mi
Turn RIGHT on CASS HOLT RD - go 0.2 mi
Turn LEFT on REX RD - go 2.3 mi
Turn RIGHT on AVENT FERRY RD - go 4.7 mi

[oznogonzo]

Very nice... will have to try it once I get my flat tire fixed. Love the name Tour de Steam Plume hehe :D

[Hets]

Great, ride, have done it couple of times over the last months. Let me know when you are next time out there motoring will join you. Need some relaxing driving during/after the holidays....

[TWISTER]

Why dosent someone make an event for over there and lets do that!

[Hets]

Hi Mark,

good suggestion, could be combined with a train ride if somebody interested..... there is an old railway station on the way and they do tourist rides on certain day's...

http://www.nhvry.org/

[minimark]

Sounds cool to me! I'll go.

[BlimeyCabrio]

Yep - motor plus train ride sounds like a great family-friendly event. We've done the train 3 or 4 times in the past several years.

Maybe do it in April or June... I'd help organize at this end.

They recently marked a few "craters" on the route for repair - so hopefully they'll get these fixed before then. There are a couple of lane-width craters on the route on semi-blind curves - manageable for a single car, but may get a little hairy for a group...

[MINI Rog]

We would be interested in attending such an event.

[CooperSKart]

We'd be interested in it for sure. I may have to go check it out soon since its pretty close by (on cool days you can see the steam plume for miles - there will be no clouds in the sky certain days except that one little one on the horizon). The New Hill train rides are pretty cool also.

[BlimeyCabrio]

Found some more rural twisty goodness yesterday afternoon - this provides an option to add another 31ish miles onto the already fantabulous Harris Lake Loop aka Tour de Steamplume...

First - here's the current google maps version of the Steamplume route that we use for the Holly Springs Beer Runs:

Tour de Steamplume Route

And here's the add-on loop. You stay on NC 42 until you get to Duncan - and then turn RIGHT instead of LEFT - and follow these directions until they get you back to Duncan about 40-45 minutes later -

Twisted Kipling Route

then you turn left and continue on the other route back to Holly Springs.

We may do this one instead in March - and maybe end up at Xios in Apex for a late lunch - Kirk (the owner) is a MINI driver...

Here's the combined route - done a slightly different (and shorter) way:

Apex - Harris Lake - Kipling Loop
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=e...8668&z=11&om=1

[Hets]

Did most of the "Tour de Stam Plume" 2 week's ago.. great ride and surface was fixed in some area's.... great riding, especially form points E to F.

Let me know what date you plan to do it, will try to make it...