It’s been nice having ATVs because we can ride for hours and hours (seeming all day long) on a single tank of gas (3.5 gallons). The bad thing is that it takes a lot of diesel to haul the ATVs anywhere using the truck. Diesel is currently $4.19/gallon, so I’ve been spending a lot of time looking for close-to-home places to ride the ATVs. Last weekend we did some riding a couple miles north of Price and found a couple of trails that were kind of fun, but really nothing special. The nice thing about them is that I only had to haul the ATVs 1.5 miles from home. I found some good looking trails here that are primarily used by rock crawlers, so I’ll have to find out if they’re suitable for our 4-wheelers–I’m guessing not, but it’s worth looking into. I’ve also been looking around in Google Earth to find trails to ride on. There are a surprising number of old mine roads in the Book Cliffs, and I think we’re going to ride a couple of them this weekend. We tried riding up Bull Hollow just north of Kenilworth several weeks ago, but we ran into too much snow to go all the way up the canyon. I’d like to ride it again this weekend, and possibly try Cordingly and Alrad canyons as well (time permitting). There are a couple more old roads near the end of Airport Road that dead-end near several coal mining prospects, but those would take a whole day by themselves.
I’ll have to save my pennies in order to ride where I’d really like to go–places like the ATV trails in the center of the San Rafael Swell, like Devil’s Racetrack, Eagle Canyon, etc. By the time I can easily afford that kind of trip (or when fuel prices go down), it’ll be pretty hot to be riding and hiking in that area, but the change of scenery will be worth it.