First ORV trail outing

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Will_K

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It'd be nice if anyone has been to Holly Oaks ORV park and could say "oh yeah, for your first time out, you should try this trail or that trail" or something. But barring that I'm sure I'll just wing it. I'm probably as old and worn out as my vehicle, but what the heck. I'm going out with my 17 year old and 16 year old, both non-drivers, but hoping it might spark a little bit of an interest. I've never done offroading aside from a guided atv tour on Oahu.

Anyway, I've basically got a stock 2007 Jeep Liberty Sport with an engine and fuel tank skid plates, a fully rebuilt rear suspension, new brakes. I have other stuff I haven't gotten around to installing. I've got 235-75R15 Forceum mud tires installed on Cherokee aftermarket steel wheels. Bit of light raintoday so I'm expecting some mud.
 

sleazy rider

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Neighbor!! Hope you got some pictures. I’m about 20 minutes from there, but never visited yet.
 

Will_K

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Tomorrow is the first they're open for the season after a month of closure. I can't help feel a little confused by what I read online. I have my orv and orv trail paths and it talks about putting them in the center but that's all spare tore and I usually seem to see the stickers top right... and I read about helmets unless you have rollover protection, but nobody wears helmets in videos so I assume a oem vehicle roof counts as rollover protection?

I'll just report out when we get home.
 

Will_K

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To prepare before leaving home I changed out my wheels to the set of mud tires. It was a 40 mile drive and as expected they were pretty noisy.

First stop for Saturday was Holly Powersports to get the flag and flag mount. Holly Oaks ORV park requires a 10' flag with an orange flag for safety so you can see when there's a vehicle that might be just out of view if you're about to go over a hill or something. It took 30-40 minutes to make something up for a flag mount because I don't have recovery hooks, apparently what they might have had would've clamped onto the hooks. I have recovery hooks waiting to install. What they provided was some flat bar stock with a couple holes and bends so they could bolt it on, the flag was 2 pieces probably 4-5 feet each.

On arriving I showed my daily pass ticket and that I had my flag, I had my ORV and ORV Trail passes on the back window. The kids were in the passenger seat. It was the last I really saw of anyone other than other people in vehicles.

Inside the part the first stop was the air station. I let out air from the tires until they were down to 15 psi, I had brought my own tire pressure gage, there wasn't one at the air station but there was free air I used at the end of the visit to reinflate to street pressure for the drive home. Don't forget your tire pressure gage!

Side note - this did take a little while, and I'd strongly consider bringing the tires and changing them in the parking lot. Granted it also takes a little time, overall it's probably pretty close. But with the tire noise, it might be worth it.

I'm going to call this trip an introduction. I stayed away from any of the more agressive hills and avoided getting into ruts because I don't have skid plates over the trans and transfer case yet and I don't have any lift. On future trips that may change. I did take on some slopes both up down and side that felt (for me at least as a first time doing this) like they were beyond normal slope - I wouldn't say it was so much I felt like we were going to tip, but my kids might say that.

Holly Oaks ORV park does have a map of the site on the website. I wasn't able to follow it when I made stops to try to get my bearings. My wife probably could and I'm bringing her next time. My kids - that's not their skill set. Knowing where I was and where I might go would've helped. I'm not sure OnX has this place, nothing showed up, but I'm not subscribed. I might subscribe if they did have the trails.

Here's a link to their map:

Definitely among what we went through a couple times is the Holly Glen Short Course. I've seen a couple youtube videos of the endurance trail and I wasn't sure I was ready to go through that so I avoided it. I might have ended up on the course in the area marked Sand Box but I'm not sure. At one point I stopped where there was a platform and a sign that said inspiration point. There was a good overview of much of the park, but I can't find it on the map to know what I was looking at.

Over the time I was there I saw a few different groups of Jeep Wranglers, some lone Cherokees, a couple groups of side-by-side UTVs and a few dirt bikes. It started off with occasional drizzle and by the time we wrapped up it was a steady light rain.

According to the guy I was talking to at Holly Powersports, he says it's fairly well organized. By comparison Silver Lake is chaos and much busier.

Daily pass was $30 and they charge per vehicle. You can buy an annual pass but it doesn't guarantee admission if the park reaches capacity. By comparison I believe Twisted Trails Off Road park charges $20 per person. I didn't see anything about cost on Silver Lake other than the 2 Michigan DNR annual passes and the Michigan state park pass.
 

blown327chevy

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Wish I would have seen your post...lol. I take mine out there quite often as it's only 30 minutes from me.

I enjoy that park. Plenty of things to do with stock to highly modified vehicles. At stock height with a welded rear diff and no sway bars mine does pretty much everything out there. Ground clearance is an issue in areas, especially the more washed out hills. My first liberty died out there last year when I blew a hole in my trans pan. My 2nd version is in the works now and will be much more capable. Maybe I'll see you out there sometime!
 

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sleazy rider

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@Will_K

If you’re interested in joining up with some great local Jeepers - Michigan Jeeps on FB hosts a monthly weekend camp and ride and are very newbie friendly. Did my first trip with them last month and had a great time up near Buckley. This month is Dads and Dirt near Glennie. On my calendar! We had several stock Jeep Wranglers and a Cherokee(!) with first timers (me included) on my first ride and no one got stuck.
 

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