23 Days, 9.5K miles, 18 States, 5 Provinces & 7 Time Zones – The Ultimate 2015 Corvette Z06 Test Drive

SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK

Traveling from Niagara, we stayed the night in Front Royal before entering Shenandoah National Park from the North entrance. The park is home to the Blue Ridge Mountains and runs north to south through Virginia and West Virginia. Skyline Drive runs atop the mountains for 105 miles and much of this is newly paved and an amazing run on motorcycle or car; we have done both.

This part of the country is stunning with limitless sightseeing opportunities that would take much too long to cover in a single run. Time to throw on the camera!

One might get the urge to take the easy road and follow along the wine route and Shenandoah Valley but only the road ‘Les traveled’ (get it?) is good for this trip.  Skyline Drive follows the top of the Appalachians in Shenandoah National Park for some amazing driving and sights.

As great as it is seeing wildlife at anytime, care has to be taken in the park as the speed limit averages 40mph and wildlife seems to enjoy trying to slow you down all too much.  This picture was taken within minutes of entering the park and just after they crossed in front of us; this being the same occurrence and same location as our last trip on motorcycle. I think they wait for the traffic before jumping out.

Skyline Drive is newly paved and great for riding, the highest point of the mountains being 3680 feet.  There are many curves in the road without ledge where, if you are not careful, your car might not be found for some time as the drop is thousands of feet into forest.

This is our first video and apologies for the quality; brand new car…brand new Go Pro and experimenting with camera locations.  It helps to throw the video on 1080 res and this video provides an idea of what the drive through the Shenandoah’s is truly like…well at least if you are hanging off the right mirror of the car.

BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY

Once through the Shenandoah’s and crossing Hwy 64, Skyline Drive becomes known as the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP).  The road is still great to drive but the newly paved portion fades as you travel further south, and the single lane roadway becomes more of a service road for slow traveling locals.

Once again, the roadway reaches some great height with many sudden turns without ledges, as well as some great tunnels and mountain lakes.

Some points of the BRP are significantly higher than the Shenandoah’s with the highest peak just over 6000 feet if you want to carry on as far south as North Carolina.

For this trip, we exited the Parkway just north of Roanoke when it came out to Hwy 461.  We followed the 461 west to the 81…81 to Bristol, home of the Bristol Motor Speedway and that nice police officer who wanted a closer look at the Z.

This video was taken in the BRP and is an example of the quality, or lack of, that the Z06 Performance Data Recorder has, remembering of course much of this is in the early morning sun.  We will have a few more vids throughout the article.