Thursday we got up and found the weather to be as if we were on the Oregon coast. The air was thick with fog and heavy mist that made everything dripping wet. But it wasn’t raining… just doing that wet misty thing like at the Pacific Ocean beaches. It was soggy-doggy outside. The forecast said it would be cloudy, but only a 20% chance of rain. Well technically, that was correct. It wasn’t raining. We were just smack dab inside the cloud! Well, we got up and moving anyway, loaded Kawi, stopped at the pooper dumper outer, and were on our way before 9:30. It was only a 30 minute drive or so to our next destination.
We got all checked in at the Hidden Falls Adventure Park. I made reservations at a full hook-up site for 2 nights, which was $60/night. This is a private off-road park, and the only people allowed to camp here are people who are riding something. So everyone through the gate is charged for trail use. For us and a two night stay (which really equals three days of riding) was $65 for one driver plus $30 for one passenger, plus tax was $106. Plus the $120 camping. Oh well 🤷♀️. We don’t usually pay to ride or pay to stay where we ride, so this isn’t a normal habit kind of spending, right?
If was fun to finally get out on the trail. KAWI IS OUT! We did take the time to switch the windshield from the 1/4 height hot weather one to the full windshield complete with a windshield wiper. And we used it a lot!
I’ve discovered that two-dimensional pictures just don’t show how gnarly some things really are. This was a hill that we did not go up, because I told Kenny that it was too early in the trip to die. (It’s the part at the end that you can barely see that was too tall for our buggy.)
We learned how slick this rock can be in the wet! It is like super fine gravel, and it cakes into the treads of the tires and our shoes. There were some places that we didn’t go up or down because it was too slippery for my comfort. 🐓
We also realized that the tires felt a little squishy. This is the first time we’ve had our lil buggy on the trail for a long time. So we went to the main corral, and they have a whole bunch of ‘air-it-up’ stations! That’s pretty handy, even though we have a super compact cool little 12-volt compressor with us.
This is part of what I call the corral. There is a big restroom/shower building on the left, a general store on the right, and all of this space here is RV camping with electric only. There are a bunch of primitive sites with no utilities, a whole ‘nother area with full hook-ups, and even cabins to rent. It is really a well set up park with lots of amenities.
Alright, back on the trail. See – we did go up some cool stuff, like this stair-step. Most of these hills were more challenging to go up than down, because they apparently do get a lot of rain here. All of these big rock wall are undermined from the water run off. So going down isn’t bad. Going up, the tires want to get stuck under the ledge.
This picture shows a good ledge. We were going up stream so didn’t try this one. The good thing is that there are by-passes and work arounds for most of these. We have pretty decent size tires, but some buggies have much smaller tires and lower ground clearance, so they can’t do a lot of big rock stuff.
Ha! I was trying to get a picture that showed how off-camber we were. I suppose if you realize that I was trying to keep my head up, and the buggy’s windshield is tilted down on the left, you can kinda see that we are not driving on a level road.
This was another big wall; I think we might have gone up or down waaay over on the left.
We did find some pretty views! The clouds were lifting, so we could see hills in the distance. We were actually looking across at where Henry & Nitro are parked. I made a little light green ^ in about the middle of the picture where the road goes off to the left. That’s our camp.
There are a bajillion trails here, and they do have quite a few signs out to help you figure out where you are. They also provide maps, which we were always trying to match up with our OnX trail map to figure out where we were and where to go. There’s a big variety of trails from single track for motorcycles, to narrow for ATV/UTV, and full-size trails for 4×4/jeeps/trucks. Overall, I think the park is about 3,000 acres, and there is something for everybody here.
Ah – here is our little camp set-up. We were in what is called “Zip’s Corner”. I don’t know who Zip is, but these sites had a LOT of space all around. The other full hook-up section for RV’s was “Area A”, and the sites were VERY close together. The ONLY advantage of Area A was that it was closer to the entrance, so not so far up hill on a bumpy dirt road to get to your site.
The sun never did come out, but it warmed up and was in the upper 60’s, so we weren’t cold in the afternoon. I think we put on about 14 miles today. We hardly saw anybody else out on the trails, but it’s only Thursday and its crummy weather. I’m sure the weekend will get busy.
Friday we slept in and just relaxed. It was still a bit cloudy and breezy, but it was going to get hot today. Around 11:00, we finally went out and changed out the windshield to the warm weather one. Our little buddy did get a little bit dirty yesterday. Hopefully we can clean him up a little bit before we put him back into our living room on Saturday, since we have to live with him in there for a few days until we get to Florence Arizona.
HA! This was funny. This is the meter and filter on the water hose coming into the trailer. A couple of days ago, Kenny was completely baffled because it said we had used something outrageous like 80 gallons or something. He could NOT figure it out, because we know we are super conservative on water use, from living on a boat so much. Well, yesterday the puzzle was solved. When he hooked it up, he looked at it again, and realized it was set on LITERS, not GALLONS. OK – that’s more reasonable!! 🙃. He fixed it so that it talks about gallons now.
Today’s forecast was predicting that the temperature would get up to 90 degrees. 🥵. We decided to hit the trail before noon and get some riding in before it got too hot. I didn’t take many pictures, but this one was for our boys. This hill, while not looking like much in two dimensions, is call “U Joint Buster”. That cliff is much higher and more rugged than it looks! There is no way we could ever get up it. But like I said, there is stuff here for everybody. You notice where the rocks look black? That isn’t natural coloring. That is rubber from tires. So plenty of crazy people do try it!
The sun came out and it was really pretty today. This was another of those off-camber adventures where I was way up in the air while Kenny was down in the ditch. We went through another gully that was narrower than this, and I’m pretty sure the bottom of the tires weren’t touching anything. We were driving through with just the side walls on the sides of the gully. 🤔 It was weird.
Another beautiful view. We encountered several other rigs on the various trails today. Side-x-sides, jeeps, trucks. We generally go a little faster than the jeeps and trucks, so when we’d come up behind them we’d either pass, or take the next trail and do a loop or something. This was one of those places where we were glad there was a by-pass. The road down was like a cliff. No testing the machinery or our guts today. We went around.
While we were out of Kawi looking at the hill and the scenery, I spied a Roadrunner! I followed him for a bit, but he was too fast for us. I told Kenny when I got back into Kawi that now we’d need to watch for falling pianos and stuff, because surely Wiley Coyote wasn’t far away. Ha! And actually, it wasn’t long before we saw a big tail of something walking away from the trail through the brush. Kenny thought it might have been a turkey. I think it had a fluffy tail, so naturally, I think it was Ol’ Wiley himself 🐕
This was another pretty view that captured some of the trails. It really is a fun area to ride, but we are used to riding 50 miles a day on long forest service roads and trails, so I’m glad we’re only here for two days.
We stopped by the general store on our way back to camp and got a couple of ice cream bars. Yum!
This is a little better picture. It shows a huge picnic shelter on the right. This place is set up to accommodate a LOT of people! The guys in the store said that by tonight, it’ll be much busier. They allow night riding on Friday and Saturday until midnight. But there is absolutely no alcohol allowed in the park. So far, everyone seems to be obeying the speed limits where people are camped and it’s actually pretty quiet in camp.
Today was really nice. The “not-rain” moisture from yesterday dampened everything down, so it is not dusty today. The store guy said that by Sunday, the whole park will be a giant dust bowl.
Here is a map of our tracks. Ignore the blue – that’s just some trails that are highlighted on our OnX maps. We did the pink trails yesterday in the wet, and the red trails today in the dry. We did about 14 miles today also. You could spend a lot of time here doing trails both ways, and it would be fun if you were riding and exploring with some other people. But for us riding by ourselves, we kinda feel like we’ve seen it and we’re ready for other adventures. We kind of like to have a destination, pack a lunch, and go for all day. We’ll have plenty of those kinds of adventures coming up in the next five weeks. 😄
Yep – it got toasty today. I’m glad we have power to run the A/C!
Tomorrow we’ll peel out and head farther west. We have a couple of Harvest Host stops between here and our reservation destination of Florence Arizona on Monday. We’ll hang out there for a couple of weeks with friends we’ve known for nearly 30 years that we enjoy boating, RV-ing, riding, and doing life and adventures with. More adventures to come!