• NAXJA is having its 18th annual March Membership Drive!!!
    Everyone who joins or renews during March will be entered into a drawing!
    More Information - Join/Renew
  • Welcome to the new NAXJA Forum! If your password does not work, please use "Forgot your password?" link on the log-in page. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] if we can provide any assistance.

Trip Reports Forum

old_man

NAXJA Forum User
This forum is for posting your trip reports and pix. I urge you to link your photos and comments.
 
I just returned from The Land Between the Lakes. My daughter (14 and on her spring break) and I camped at the OHV park called Turkey Bay. The LBL area is huge, about 8x20 miles, and the OHV park has 100 miles of trails. The trails are well marked by colors. The yellow trails could easily be done with any high clearance vehicle. The next hardest were the orange and were steep and narrow. The next hardest were the blur trails that were even steeper and narrower. I actually backed out of one blue trail when I felt like my XJ was about to roll over.
I was at LBL for 3 days and only saw one other "vehicle", a chopped Ranger piloted by Randy and his partner Heather. Everyone else were on quads and dirt bikes. Randy and I provided each other with support, allowing us to try harder and harder trails. Paul
 
Yankee Hill/Miner's Gulch - 6/21/15

Got sick of sitting around inside avoiding the heat and decided to head out to some nearby-ish easy, though largely unfamiliar, trails on Father's Day with my boys with the goal of reaching Chinns Lake just prior to sundown.

We had gone up a lower portion of Yankee Hill last summer to just short of where it stops being a bumpy dirt road and starts becoming an actual "trail" (before some mud pits.)

Despite the sparse information (and somehow overlooking the fact that it's nearly 4 miles alone), Miner's Gulch looked like an interesting spur to check out. It was nice to have the shade and we came across some trailside snow that was perfect for a cooling snowball fight. What the internet failed to mention is that the quarter to half mile left to the West outlet suddenly becomes a relentless uphill of rock watermelons clearly installed by brain surgeons to ensure future business and keep their boat payments going...

Jesusmaryandjoseph.

Had I the foresight to video this section, there's little doubt in my mind it could have been used against me in court to demonstrate willful, if very scenic and adventurous, child endangerment. Glancing back at a couple points, all you saw was two (very handsome) bobble heads *bashing* to and fro between the sides of their car seats.

Though admittedly lacking any first-hand experience in an actual impending disaster, I feel I now have practiced what will transpire and it will largely involve me telling my sons, "Don't worry, boys, it will be over soon..."

Somehow Vera managed to hold together after Miner's Gulch chewed us up and spit us out with only a seemingly thrown wheel weight and the CB antenna hood channel bracket being shaken almost completely loose (the 3' Firestik on heavy duty spring repeatedly being whipping almost 90 degrees can do that apparently.)

Then, after that, dropping back down Yankee Hill praying for relief and receiving very little? I don't know if any of you have been up there recently—being a newbie playground and whatnot—but some of the hills have seen some notable erosion from what I can tell.

I can hear you flexing a giant, schadenfreudian smirk right now considering the low rating of these particular trails but I don't care, we are NOT going back out there...

...for at least a week or two.

After all, I did tell the boys they would get to throw rocks in a lake. And a promise is a promise.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top