firecracker22
Sponsoring Member
- Oct 23, 2000
- 3,217
- 0
Well myself, Dirtygirly and two other female riding friends enjoyed some AWESOME trail riding this weekend. We put on quite a few miles, had no major crashes or injuries, and had a nearly perfect weekend.
Except for a couple blemishes.
While I prefer the primitive campgrounds (It is not worth $15/night to me for a picnic table and flush toilet), we stayed at a USFS campground for convenience sake. The bad part is the cost, the neighbors, and the lack of trail accessibility. A couple years ago, there was a trail head right in the campground but it was closed, something to do with the hikers, I believe. Well the new trailhead is more than a mile down the road. And the management group requires you push your bike (even if it’s street legal, according to the camp host!) to the road. So none of this sits right with me: we pay for the trails through ORV tabs, but they close them for the hikers. Then we pay for a camp spot, but can’t even quietly and slowly ride to the road. Well my friends and I were one of the two dirt bike groups in the campground, and the other group was gone by sometime on Sunday. Monday morning, the overweight, retired, jackass of a camp host comes storming into our campsite telling us about how people on “rigs just like these” caused three different wrecks on the road this morning, going 50 miles an hour and scaring the folks who live here. Now even if that’s true, why is he telling us? We’re sitting there eating breakfast! He says it is now against the law to ride on the road (which it was before, but always tolerated) and that the sheriffs and USFS rangers are on their way. Of course they’re not, never did show up. He even made us move our bikes from where they were parked to the narrow gravel parking strip, quoting that “all vehicles must be parked in the designated parking area.” Good lord. He wasn’t even nice about it, and nowhere did I see that included motorcycles, when bikes are parked every which way in every other campground.
So here are my problems with the whole situation:
The trailhead out of camp is closed, but they make it very, very hard for us to get to the new trailhead. How many people want to load up and drive to a trailhead when they're camping? Plus, there's no parking at the trailhead--only room for maybe 3 or 4 rigs.
My group of friends aren't the ones causing the problems, yet we're targeted when someone else does.
I personally think the problems are blown out of proportion anyway: dirt bikes look and sound like they're going faster than they are, and no one else I talked to around camp had seen any wrecks, much less 3.
ORV tag money contributes to the maintenance for these trails yet it gets harder to ride them every year.
Dirt bikes must be pushed through camp partially due to noise, yet nobody puts restrictions on the screaming bratty kids, barking dogs, loud stereos, or loud exhausts on pickups that run around the camp all day and all night long.
The camp host just couldn't understand why we told him we wouldn't be back next year!
Except for a couple blemishes.
While I prefer the primitive campgrounds (It is not worth $15/night to me for a picnic table and flush toilet), we stayed at a USFS campground for convenience sake. The bad part is the cost, the neighbors, and the lack of trail accessibility. A couple years ago, there was a trail head right in the campground but it was closed, something to do with the hikers, I believe. Well the new trailhead is more than a mile down the road. And the management group requires you push your bike (even if it’s street legal, according to the camp host!) to the road. So none of this sits right with me: we pay for the trails through ORV tabs, but they close them for the hikers. Then we pay for a camp spot, but can’t even quietly and slowly ride to the road. Well my friends and I were one of the two dirt bike groups in the campground, and the other group was gone by sometime on Sunday. Monday morning, the overweight, retired, jackass of a camp host comes storming into our campsite telling us about how people on “rigs just like these” caused three different wrecks on the road this morning, going 50 miles an hour and scaring the folks who live here. Now even if that’s true, why is he telling us? We’re sitting there eating breakfast! He says it is now against the law to ride on the road (which it was before, but always tolerated) and that the sheriffs and USFS rangers are on their way. Of course they’re not, never did show up. He even made us move our bikes from where they were parked to the narrow gravel parking strip, quoting that “all vehicles must be parked in the designated parking area.” Good lord. He wasn’t even nice about it, and nowhere did I see that included motorcycles, when bikes are parked every which way in every other campground.
So here are my problems with the whole situation:
The trailhead out of camp is closed, but they make it very, very hard for us to get to the new trailhead. How many people want to load up and drive to a trailhead when they're camping? Plus, there's no parking at the trailhead--only room for maybe 3 or 4 rigs.
My group of friends aren't the ones causing the problems, yet we're targeted when someone else does.
I personally think the problems are blown out of proportion anyway: dirt bikes look and sound like they're going faster than they are, and no one else I talked to around camp had seen any wrecks, much less 3.
ORV tag money contributes to the maintenance for these trails yet it gets harder to ride them every year.
Dirt bikes must be pushed through camp partially due to noise, yet nobody puts restrictions on the screaming bratty kids, barking dogs, loud stereos, or loud exhausts on pickups that run around the camp all day and all night long.
The camp host just couldn't understand why we told him we wouldn't be back next year!
