We're heading to Pigeon Forge Friday for a weeks vacation and am taking our Polaris. Any good trails near there?

 

If you are talking about Pidgin Forge Tennessee then I can't remember any open riding trails there. I live about 2 hours away and the only close riding public riding area is in above Knoxville or Greenville Tn. There may be some trails you can ride, so if I were you stop at that big dealership you can see from the interstate and ask where a good local place is to ride.

 

There are many trails that are fairly close, but not sure about right in the PF area. The problem is that PF is just outside the national park and there is no riding in the park at all.

Within one hour of PF you can find Coal Creek or Royal Blue (now called North Cumberland WMA) - both are excellent large riding areas. Also an hour away is Chuck Swan WMA, but it's good for easy rides as it does not have any challenges - nice scenery though. CC is private and has reasonable daily fees. NC is fairly pricy for out-of-staters. CS is free to all.

There is also Brimstone, about 1-1/2 hours from PC. Reasonable fee and an excellent place if you really want to test the limits of you and your ATV.

There may be other places closer to PC. Like HondaRacer said, check in at the large ATV store located at the 407 exit of I-40, they may know of some.

 

You could forego the tourist trap of Pidgeon Forge, and just spend the entire time at Windrock, near Oak Ridge. 72,000 acres of riding. Before I moved to WV, we used to drive down from Michigan to ride there. 30 trips and over 6000 miles in less than three years.

Much more fun than the other place....lol

 

Cheaper too!

 

I'm sure it is.... although, it is way more expensive than when we started riding there. The first time was in March 02. We would park the motorhome up by the shed where they would sell permits. Many times, we'd be the only ones there. There were lots of weekends even, where we'd have the whole mountain to ourselves. It was great...I miss the good ole days.

In fact, I was the king of the mountain in 03. I put more miles in at windrock than anyone. Well, we were riding WAY off property by then. We were over 50 miles from the parking lot riding new trails, nothing beats that exploring.

Dang, makes me wanna ride.



Do you ride there?

 

Not so much in the past few years. My riding at Windrock goes way, way back - before it became an orgainzed riding area called Coal Creek. Back then there were no permits needed but there were not as many trails either.

I had an annual permit for the first year or two that Coal Creek was in existance. The second year I didn't ride there enough to justify the annual fee. Since then I go occasionally and get a day permit. Frankly, I enjoy getting out and exploring, not waiting in line watching a string of jeeps try to get up a narrow trail, so it's safe to say that the crowds chased me away from CC. There are lots of nice trails though.

We've gone back to riding Royal Blue more. They call it North Cumberland WMA now and have expanded it quite a bit. Sometimes we hit Brimstone.

 

We started there not too long after the club started selling permits. There were only 19 trails, I believe, that were on the map. The north side of 116 wasn't even mapped. We rode quite a bit of that before the maps came out. Panther's Bluff, The Flats, and Roundrock were all regular destinations. After a while, we started riding way off property. We made it up around Smoky Junction and over to the Flats from there. We rode the property the paper owned before selling it to TVA as well. We were like kids in the candy store. I love exploring new trails and terrain and there was enough to keep us busy. I believe we did ride some of the southern part of Royal Blue.

We had an offer to ride up past Jacksboro, but I can't remember the name of the place. I wanted to say it was brimstone, but I just don't remember. I bought my Predator from Twin Cove and the mechanic there offered to take us up there, but we never made it.

We made some good friends down there, some very fine people in that area. Our buddy Manual Tinker lives on the road into Windrock, and we used to keep our atv's there to keep from hauling them back and forth from Michigan. Bo Beane was another good guy there, and guys from the club...Rinkidink, Red and the rest.

We used to park our motorhome up by the shed, along with our buddy from Watertown. If you spent any time there around then, you saw us, cause we always seemed to be there.

Good times...