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.
