What do you love and hate about your local wheeling spots?

[chimmike]

Hate: closest ORV park is a sand and mud hole paradise for rednecks.
Next closest ORV park is 2hrs away
Public lands are state and national forests with trails easy enough a subaru could scoot along at speed.

Hate: it's all mud. F**k mud. And Florida mud isn't just dirty water, it's slop. Doesn't matter if you're on 35s or 44 boggers. This mud will suck you in. Constantly reminding people that the dirty water with hard-pack bottom they drove through wasn't mud. You know it when you get stuck in it.

Love? uh. I'll let ya know when I make it to the ORV park. Really want to take a week and go to TN and visit some of the ORV parks there.

 

[Jacket4256]

I am a newbie and just getting started, I live in East Tennessee.

The Good I am about 20 minutes from windrock

The bad its hard to find easy stuff to start getting my feet wet, also the SXS have messed up a lot of trails.

 

[Elyse8743]

love: some great mid-level challenging trails as well as quite a few easy rides. The more north of MA you get (i.e. into the white mountains or into Maine) there's quite a bit of great scenery.

hate: I have to drive at least an hour to even start finding any good trails, and it's super difficult to scout them out since they are shushed everywhere. quite a few landowners put gates on public class VI roads because of shitty kids dumping stuff and being loud. MA has like 1 actual legal offroad trail and it's 2 hours away from me.

I wanna move to UT haha.

 

[Irun]

Love the seasons and diversity of terrain.

Absolutely hate the mud, specifically clay, and lack of public land for wheeling

 

[Vasq]

Love: the weather, the scenery

Hate: the ORV area's are mostly intense, not any mild "wheel-to-destination" trails around that I've found.

 

[Cornbread]

Mud is what ruins our trails here also. Not that I cant get through most of it but dam it is hard to clean up after. My fear is always getting stuck in a deep water hole, that would suck.

 

[tworley]

Tons of granite and anything from mild to wild.

Cons--short season, big population which means trails are jam packed, and as @rasband pointed out a ton of side-by-sides and fourwheelers that go off trail. CO has quite the influx of out-of-staters move or visit here who do not understand responsible wheeling

 

[starkey480]

Tons of granite and anything from mild to wild.

Cons--short season, big population which means trails are jam packed, and as @rasband pointed out a ton of side-by-sides and fourwheelers that go off trail. CO has quite the influx of out-of-staters move or visit here who do not understand responsible wheeling

Having others out there also sounds like a pro. I almost never see another soul on my trails. It makes it more eerie feeling knowing there isn’t anyone or anything to help you besides who and what you brought.
Edit: except for the jackasses who go off trail.

 

[Jerry Bransford]

I absolutely love my California and Arizona trails, they are beautiful and spectacular with all levels of difficulty from easy to frigging near impossible. Great wheeling is available year-round.

Drawbacks? California is big and some of the trails are quite a distance with not many good ones being less than 100 miles away.

 

[Apparition]

Love travelling to wheel because it has to be a vacation.

Hate having to travel so far.

 

[alittleoff]

I loved my former SoCal rock gardens.
Nothing up here like that in Montucky.
Mostly SxS that go way too fast around blind corners. But entertaining to see how big their eyes get as they narrowly miss
you going by. I'll stop and shut the engine off for the horse riders and usually chat for a bit but when we hear the SxS, all of us are on alert.

 

[tworley]

Having others out there also sounds like a pro. I almost never see another soul on my trails. It makes it more eerie feeling knowing there isn’t anyone or anything to help you besides who and what you brought.
Edit: except for the jackasses who go off trail.

We typically have a small group that goes out and we're hitting the road at 6am to beat the traffic. This was a couple of years ago now but it made the day absolutely miserable...

Not shown are the 20+ other rigs that made it over the ridge

 

[MutantNinjaTJ]

Newer Mexico has every type of wheeling you could want and access to southern CO as well.
Fucking hate the new CanAm’s and the butt holes that think they need to run 60mph everywhere they go, even while they are “road hunting” yeah, gonna see a lot of Elk that way!

 

[csaxj3]

The Love

I really like wheeling in the southeast. The weather allows getting out all year long. The heat is tolerable in the summer with no doors, windows and A/C. Very little sun get through the trees is very helpful. Spring and fall are of course the nicest. Winter is mild enough to melt away snow and ice after a few days and usually 40s at night and 50+ during the days.

It is easy to find any level of difficulty. From maintained gravel roads to trails that will humble the best built rigs anywhere. I know that is not unique to the southeast, it just looks different. Trees play a part on many trails. I wheel with JKUs and JLUs and rarely another TJ. The TJ definitely shines in the trees a couple times a tree saved me a flop.

Hawk Pride and Adventure Offroad Park, AOP are probably my favorites. Windrock is a bit of a drive for me, but seems very spread out and you spend a lot of time getting to the next trail. Whooly's and Wheelin in the Country are close and fun too.

The Hate

Mud holes suck and they are everywhere. They never dry up and can stop you at anytime. I stuck mine last weekend when both differentials high centered on the hump between the two tracks. The tires were turning but not able to move forward or back. The rock is porous and and can seep water out for many days after a rain. The rock are not super grippy and adding water doesn't help. Did I mention I hate mud holes.

The lack of public land is something I don't like. What there is doesn't test the rig or the driver. To be honest though I have not scouted any public land, but have not heard of anyone other than Overlanders using public land.

Lack of scenery is kind of a let down. It is not as bad as Kansas or Nebraska by any means, sorry. If you never get west of Interstate 25 you won't truly know what you are missing. Fly fishing is better out west too. I know that isn't Jeep related, but a big plus with me.

Ride the DBBB.

Just did a large chunk of it as part of the Red Clay Rally, I'm itching to go back and explore all the cool areas we didnt see or have time to stop and enjoy.

 

[brandomguy]

Love western Colorado. Public land everywhere. High desert , Rocky Mountains to the East, San Juan mountains to the south, Moab and southeastern Utah to the West.
Hate. The crowds!

 

[97TJNM]

Love- the terrain. There is a ton of trails and really great wheeling spots near me. Some a quick 10 minute drive, but it would take me a couple years to fully explore just what is within 2 hours of me. Lots of easy trails that only occasionally require 4-hi. Coming from muddy north Louisiana, the offroading is so completely DIFFERENT here, and it's been a lot of fun exploring the new (to me) scenery.

Hate- my current setup. Dana 30/35 combo geared to 3.07's. There is an awesome approximately 15 mile long trail not 20 minutes from my house that I can only make it about 2 miles into before it gets too rocky for my current setup... But my Dana 44 swap should take care of that once I get it done! Can't wait!

 

[bucky]

Love:
I have everything but mud within 15 min to 3 hours of the house. 15 min to the forrest roads, 90 min to the Hammers, 3 hrs or less to the Imperial Sand Dunes or the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Hate:
Having to pay now for access to the Imperial Sand Dunes.
All the Assholes who are not satisfied with running on the local trails and decide they are going to start their own. I’m afraid that at some point the powers that be will shut things down like they did to the ATVs and side by sides.
View from my shop below.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

When I was in Colorado:

Love: Having hundreds of miles of forest service roads practically on my doorstep. No mud. It was nice having some traffic in case something ever went south and I needed help, but I never had to use it.
Hate: More people means more douchebags that dump trash or leave shell casings everywhere, so a lot of what was nearby wasn't that nice to look at. Having so much so close made it easy to get lazy and just do the same trails over and over again, and spoiled me for having to travel farther to wheel or find more challenging trails because it was so easy to just leave the house after breakfast and be back for dinner. Seasons were short some years, though there were some very dry winters like 2017-2018 where I wheeled through the winter.

In Oklahoma:
Love: Don't know yet because I haven't been. I'm expecting more variation in difficulty.
Hate: there's nothing that isn't at least 2 hours away, and from what research I've done on the web there's probably going to be some mud. Hoping it's mostly just dirty water with solid ground underneath. I may end up finally buying a power washer.

 

[tworley]

Hate: More people means more douchebags that dump trash or leave shell casings everywhere, so a lot of what was nearby wasn't that nice to look at.

El Paso County has gotten horrible. I tend to blame it on the base located in COS. Maybe I am wrong on that though. I get incredibly upset when I see thousands of casings on the ground, trees that have been shot down, and literal garbage that is used as target practice.

 

[TNHEADDUCK]

Love: I am fortunate that there are at least a dozen or more parks within an easy drive from Middle TN, anything from unlocked SUVs on 31s to full blown buggy trails with bypasses on any kind of terrain you could wish for.

Hate: The bad part is the amount of litter that people are leaving on the trails will eventually shut some of them down, Windrock has eliminated alcohol which has helped on the beer cans but not the coke cans ( we call all soft drinks cokes in TN ) and other litter.