OK, my 7y/o son and I headed up to ONF on Fri, Oct 14, because he had off from school. I had planned to ride all day Fri, stay the night, and ride all day Sat. We wanted to ride as many of the trails as we could, and generally just explore the forest. I thought we’d hit Lake Delancy 1st, and then to Rodman Dam. We got a late start, and left the house at about 9:00am, which put us at lake Delancy at 11:45. The day was cool, about 74, and the sky was a little cloudy, all the makings of a great day.
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!
We pulled in to the OHV Center, to find nothing there. I thought there would be a building, with a ranger or 2, so I could get some better maps, and pick his brain, maybe even a restroom for my son. Nothing in sight, but a fenced in area that says closed to the public?? Not much of a center.
We drove on to Lake Delancy, where we were greeted by the guy on duty. He drove up in a ute, and told us about the self pay, and it was $6 to park. We gave our $6, unloaded and were off.
We attempted the So Long Leaf trail, which was about 10 mi or so. It was a little difficult to navigate, as there were hundreds of adjoining trails. It was a lot smoother and wider than the trails we had been on in Croom, with less whoops, but lots of sugar sand. The sand didn’t bother us a bit, but the bikes were having a hard time with it. 70% of the trail was nice and smooth though.
We stopped for a water break about half way through.
Great looking kid!
There was plenty of critters to enjoy, but being on the loud ATV, I’m sure we misses most of them. We saw a deer, and in passing another ATVer said he saw a black bear, but I don’t know about that one.
The bigger animals were too fast for me, and were gone before I could get the camera out of the backpack. There were some butterflies that were teaming around these bushes, which were a mixture of wild flowers and wild blackberries.
We finished that trail in about an hr and 15min, despite our break and my picture taking. On to Rodman Dam. We went straight up 88. We saw in the distance clouds of dust, and dirtbikes, and ATVs flying down the road. When we got to the spot where we saw the riders, there was this guy holding a chain off of his quad. So I ask the enevidable stupid question “are you broken down” He replies “yep it’s the chain” We offer to tow him back to wherever, and he refused. I asked how he would get back, and he said he would push….Well this is sugar sand, he has a prosthetic leg, and no telling how far he needs to go. There is no way we are going to let him sit there. So we insist and he agrees.
Well I tow him through some of the thickest sugar sand ever. I had to put it in 4 wheel drive, and I still thought we might get stuck going so slow. We made it back to his truck, which amounted to about 1 mi. I would not want to have pushed that thing back. He offers to pay me, so I tell him to pay it forward to some one else. No prob man.
Rodman Dam:
Rodman Lake?? There was all this crap floating everywhere in the entire lake. You could never take a boat in there:
The river behind the Dam:
The open, sandy area to the SW of the dam complements of Google Earth:
What a great place to just let er rip, make some dust, haul azz, freestyle or what ever you want to do. Approximately twice as large as Croom’s Sand Hill Day area:
These really don’t do it justice on just how large this playground is:
Mini-me tearing it up:
There are mini tracks between the trees with berms, tons of trails through the tree line, little hills to climb, just a great place to tear it up. There was an area bisecting the area that was real smooth. You could really open her up. GREAT PLACE.
We wanted to explore another trail, so we headed off and followed the yellow arrows for what seemed like 5 mi or so. I looked at the GPS and we were over by lake Delancy again. Well we really didn’t want to do such a long trail as it was getting late, and the little guy would rather fool around in the open area again, so we turned around and headed back. The trail was equally as good as the Long Leaf trail. Still plenty of those %$#%$# whoops, but enough smooth trail for me.
We headed back to the motel at about 6pm, plenty dirty and tired. We stayed at the Best Western at I75 and 200, right behind Cracker Barrel. Nice and clean, but not the least expensive place at just under $100 per night, $85 with AAA. Any other places anyone could recommend? Closer maybe, as it’s quite a hike from there.
Sat am we woke up and headed to the Power Poles, East of Big Scrub Campgrounds. We parked just off of 19 and 73. Between here and BS, just plain stinks. TOTALLY whooped out, garbage everywhere, rangers that hate ATVers, …. We went in search of the Blue Sink. The trail that leads to it, goes N off of 73, and the entrance is about 2mi from 19, and marked in the power pole with ribbons tied around it. The trail is about .8mi in to a big sandy area. Walk the .05mi trail to the SE to get to the lake:
There was some guy fishing with a hand line:
..and some crazy kids swimming, and jumping in off of a rope swing. My sone made the observation that they were lucky that the alligators had not eaten them yet:
We took another trail to the south looking for Devils Bay, but what we found were seriously whooped out trails. We took a side trail that looked as if it had seen riders in a few years, and ran into these nasty spiders:
So we turned around, and headed E beside Power Line Rd (73) past 445, to find the Paisley Trail System. Well we found the entrance, but some dirtbikers said it was totally whooped out, so we looked NE beside 445 and found a couple of nice smooth trails we could haul azz on. We finished up the day fooling around in a few of the trails off of Power Line rd.
Overall impression was: Lake Delancy trails were very cool, and I would do them again, Rodman was the best, and it’ll be our 1st stop in the future, Big Scrub is a dumping ground for the locals beer, and water bottles, paper, washing machines, mattresses, etc. Totally whooped out trails, people riding double with no helmets, rangers that hate us, and fly at 50+ mph down the dirt roads, no one even following the simplest of rules …. I don’t think we need to go back to BS.
ONF is the greatest riding area we have been to. The wildlife, plants and the trails, for the most part, was amazing. Everyone please take out what ever you brought in. We even took out a bunch of bottles some other piece of $hit left. Take care of our Forest, or it wont be there for our children.
