Post by William on Sept 29, 2021 18:17:22 GMT -5
Hi Everyone!
My wife and I just got back yesterday from Windrock Park in TN, we rode for a few hours on Sunday after we got there, most of the day Monday, and for a few hours on Tuesday before we left. I wanted to share some initial impressions about the trip and the park itself, and show off some pictures/videos we took!
The park is about 400 miles from our house, so roughly 7.5 hours ish. We made it to the park around 2:00pm, the parking lot was super crowded. We went into the general store which was pretty nice, good selection of supplies except it was lacking in drink choices. 4 day pass was $60 and a 1 year was $100, since the 1 year is from the date of purchase not just calendar year we opted for that. After a t shirt and some drinks we spent roughly $250, and they don't have bathrooms. What?! As you might imagine since we just drove 7+ hours and hadn't checked into the hotel yet, the idea of a port a potty wasn't thrilling, it transitioned from unappealing to unacceptable when we saw the inside of them. I won't go into detail but they were unusable, and a simple out of order sign would have been considerate. I could exercise one of the luxuries of being a man but my wife found herself in a precarious spot at this point, luckily we found another port a potty on the other side of one of the parking lots that was at least usable, but I really can't imagine how they could make something so simple such a frustration. Especially since there is only 1 trail head and they charge a decent amount for passes.
After that we hit the trails and followed their pre-printed directions to get to the prison, which took like 2 hours each way. I didn't really anticipate dedicating our entire first day(afternoon) to that ride but being our first time we had no perspective on the scale of the park, this place is BIG. Just getting to the next intersection can take an hour easily, something to get used to. The ride to the prison was cool, some sections of the blue trails were kinda sketchy but we made it through fine. The "restaurant" at the prison is gross, everything tasted funny including the fountain drinks, how do you mess up a hot dog? If you're into drinking and riding the prison sells moonshine and even has a cheap tasting option, weird but ok.
A striking difference between Windrock and all of the Hatfield trails we have ridden is the distance to civilization. We stayed in a nice hotel that was like 9 minutes from the trail head, the roads leading to the trailhead were regular highways, it didn't have that sprawled out feeling that going from one HM trailhead to another has. Too bad all the cabins at their campgrounds were booked solid, that would have made a big difference I think.
Monday our first plan was to see the train, I think it took about 1.5 hours to get to (unless you take trail 22, every place you go on these trails starts off with a 10 minute ride up a long paved road) taking trails G5 and G6. There were a few sections of these that we were surprised were called "green" and "blue" but a recurring theme that we have noticed is that even if a trail has a section that is obviously different than the rest they don't mark it as such, in other words they won't change the color of a trail just because one section is moderate or difficult.
After making it back to the general store we tried to ride to Caryville Flats, but again really had no idea how far away it is. We rode for almost 2 hours and we made it like 1/3 of the way there, with no way to make it there and back before dark we decided to just turn that into a ~ 4 hour scenic ride and call it a day. Again there were some sections of those blue trails that were a bit on the black side lol.
Tuesday we wanted to just ride trail 22 and 24 before loading up and driving home. We rode all of 22 aside from a section blocked by a giant downed tree, luckily there was a bypass trail right around it. The section of trail 22 with all those big rocks is bananas, in retrospect I should have gone up the right side of it. I had to stop and get out to see more clearly and pick a new line to get up the left side. It's weird how the trails change with time/weather, some videos we watched that section of the trail looked completely different than when we were there. We found a very recent video from a week ago of a jeep club, and there was a wrangler on like 37's that struggled in the same spot we did, that made me feel better lol. I'm not sure how that type of trail fits into the category of "moderate" but I digress.
After our rock climbing adventure we had had our fill lol, we headed back to the trailhead and loaded up and went home.
Overall some things that we really liked about Windrock:
The map app. It worked great and was accurate/up to date.
Gas station style (credit card) pump at the trail head with ethanol free gas. Decent price all things considered. ($3.83 for 87 octane and $4.24 for high test)
Pressure washing stations.
Centralized trail head.
Not far from town. (handy since their cabins are all booked)
The campground. As if we didn't already want a toyhauler bad enough, their campground looked excellent.
Scenery.
Overall some things that we really disliked about Windrock:
Bathrooms. (lack thereof)
Their pre-printed directions only included times for some rides (3 hr easy ride for example), other rides that took 8 hours had no indication of time.
Lots of paved road riding, between the P1 trail (which is step 1 to getting almost anywhere), and how often you have to get onto 116 to get to the "attractions", we found ourselves listening to the engine scream going 35mph on pavement an awful lot for trail riding.
Accuracy of trail difficulty, or at least indication of differences.
The paper map is one gigantic page, it's like 100 Sq feet and hard to use.
Trail signs, they're not marked well and some of the signs have 15 different trail numbers on them.
The feeling of being "nickle and dimed", paper map costs money, map app is a yearly fee, $30 t shirts, stuff like that.
Overall it was a good trip, we just learned a bunch of lessons our first time there. Next time we can leverage this knowledge to have more fun.
My wife and I just got back yesterday from Windrock Park in TN, we rode for a few hours on Sunday after we got there, most of the day Monday, and for a few hours on Tuesday before we left. I wanted to share some initial impressions about the trip and the park itself, and show off some pictures/videos we took!
The park is about 400 miles from our house, so roughly 7.5 hours ish. We made it to the park around 2:00pm, the parking lot was super crowded. We went into the general store which was pretty nice, good selection of supplies except it was lacking in drink choices. 4 day pass was $60 and a 1 year was $100, since the 1 year is from the date of purchase not just calendar year we opted for that. After a t shirt and some drinks we spent roughly $250, and they don't have bathrooms. What?! As you might imagine since we just drove 7+ hours and hadn't checked into the hotel yet, the idea of a port a potty wasn't thrilling, it transitioned from unappealing to unacceptable when we saw the inside of them. I won't go into detail but they were unusable, and a simple out of order sign would have been considerate. I could exercise one of the luxuries of being a man but my wife found herself in a precarious spot at this point, luckily we found another port a potty on the other side of one of the parking lots that was at least usable, but I really can't imagine how they could make something so simple such a frustration. Especially since there is only 1 trail head and they charge a decent amount for passes.
After that we hit the trails and followed their pre-printed directions to get to the prison, which took like 2 hours each way. I didn't really anticipate dedicating our entire first day(afternoon) to that ride but being our first time we had no perspective on the scale of the park, this place is BIG. Just getting to the next intersection can take an hour easily, something to get used to. The ride to the prison was cool, some sections of the blue trails were kinda sketchy but we made it through fine. The "restaurant" at the prison is gross, everything tasted funny including the fountain drinks, how do you mess up a hot dog? If you're into drinking and riding the prison sells moonshine and even has a cheap tasting option, weird but ok.
A striking difference between Windrock and all of the Hatfield trails we have ridden is the distance to civilization. We stayed in a nice hotel that was like 9 minutes from the trail head, the roads leading to the trailhead were regular highways, it didn't have that sprawled out feeling that going from one HM trailhead to another has. Too bad all the cabins at their campgrounds were booked solid, that would have made a big difference I think.
Monday our first plan was to see the train, I think it took about 1.5 hours to get to (unless you take trail 22, every place you go on these trails starts off with a 10 minute ride up a long paved road) taking trails G5 and G6. There were a few sections of these that we were surprised were called "green" and "blue" but a recurring theme that we have noticed is that even if a trail has a section that is obviously different than the rest they don't mark it as such, in other words they won't change the color of a trail just because one section is moderate or difficult.
After making it back to the general store we tried to ride to Caryville Flats, but again really had no idea how far away it is. We rode for almost 2 hours and we made it like 1/3 of the way there, with no way to make it there and back before dark we decided to just turn that into a ~ 4 hour scenic ride and call it a day. Again there were some sections of those blue trails that were a bit on the black side lol.
Tuesday we wanted to just ride trail 22 and 24 before loading up and driving home. We rode all of 22 aside from a section blocked by a giant downed tree, luckily there was a bypass trail right around it. The section of trail 22 with all those big rocks is bananas, in retrospect I should have gone up the right side of it. I had to stop and get out to see more clearly and pick a new line to get up the left side. It's weird how the trails change with time/weather, some videos we watched that section of the trail looked completely different than when we were there. We found a very recent video from a week ago of a jeep club, and there was a wrangler on like 37's that struggled in the same spot we did, that made me feel better lol. I'm not sure how that type of trail fits into the category of "moderate" but I digress.
After our rock climbing adventure we had had our fill lol, we headed back to the trailhead and loaded up and went home.
Overall some things that we really liked about Windrock:
The map app. It worked great and was accurate/up to date.
Gas station style (credit card) pump at the trail head with ethanol free gas. Decent price all things considered. ($3.83 for 87 octane and $4.24 for high test)
Pressure washing stations.
Centralized trail head.
Not far from town. (handy since their cabins are all booked)
The campground. As if we didn't already want a toyhauler bad enough, their campground looked excellent.
Scenery.
Overall some things that we really disliked about Windrock:
Bathrooms. (lack thereof)
Their pre-printed directions only included times for some rides (3 hr easy ride for example), other rides that took 8 hours had no indication of time.
Lots of paved road riding, between the P1 trail (which is step 1 to getting almost anywhere), and how often you have to get onto 116 to get to the "attractions", we found ourselves listening to the engine scream going 35mph on pavement an awful lot for trail riding.
Accuracy of trail difficulty, or at least indication of differences.
The paper map is one gigantic page, it's like 100 Sq feet and hard to use.
Trail signs, they're not marked well and some of the signs have 15 different trail numbers on them.
The feeling of being "nickle and dimed", paper map costs money, map app is a yearly fee, $30 t shirts, stuff like that.
Overall it was a good trip, we just learned a bunch of lessons our first time there. Next time we can leverage this knowledge to have more fun.
