I rode my ATV hard yesterday for a little more than two hours and covered 25 miles, and the noise I was hearing on Saturday never returned. I hope that whatever it was doesn’t come back at an inopportune moment when I’m riding out in the middle of nowhere.
Riding the past two afternoons was nice practice using the maps in my new GPS. I’m used to planning my route out at home, in advance of a ride, so I usually know exactly where I’m going and I can simply follow the waypoints I created at home while I’m on the ride. Now I can go somewhere and just start riding, and whenever I hit a fork in the road, I can consult the map and determine which one I want to take. It might be fun to start doing things a little more spontaneously.
After twice going through the trouble of loading my ATV into the truck and hauling it such a short distance to the staging area at the baseball fields on the north end of town, I decided I ought to check into whether Price City has an ATV ordinance that allows ATVs on city streets. There’s an ATV route map on their website, but there’s absolutely no other information (not even a map key) that explains what the blue lines mean. Contrast that to Helper City’s site, which has a very easy to understand map and the full text of their ATV ordinance. I e-mailed Price City’s police department asking about the map, and for a copy of any ordinances related to ATV use within the city limits, and this is the full response I got from the Chief: “You can use the access roads to get to the dirt and back home again if you are off-road legal. Must obey traffic laws when on the street.” That fell very short of what I asked for, but I suppose I can take it to mean that it’s legal for me to ride from my house (using the shortest route possible) to one of the designated ATV routes, and from there to any of the dirt roads that leave town.
Actually, I could ride from my house into the San Rafael Swell (assuming that I can legally pass through Wellington, which seems likely–I’ll have to check on it), but it would be a 25-mile ride before I hit the Swell just south of Mounds. I would have to refuel in Cleveland or Huntington, or carry extra fuel along. I think it would be fun to try, but perhaps just once.