How's Finger Lakes OHV

[movingman]

I am going to be outside St Louis over Thanksgiving and my father-in-law was interested in going riding sometime that weekend. Finger Lakes OHV is about an hour from their place. Would this be a good place for someone new to riding? What do you think of the park?
I could go to St Joe but that is a couple of hours away. Would it be worth the trip over finger lakes? I went there in the spring and had a great time. I know there is a lot of easy riding there.
Thanks for any input.

[ubnpast]

Nov 9, 2010 18:03:52 GMT -6 movingman said:

Would it be worth the trip over finger lakes? I went there in the spring and had a great time.

I'm confused by the question. Have you been to Finger Lakes before?

There are a few easy places to ride, but it doesn't take long for a newbie to get into a place that would make them uncomfortable. There are also dead ends with hardly enough room to turn around. The last time we went, the trails were over grown and you had to duck under or around lots of branches. There were mud holes in lots of places. I know you like mud holes, so that might be fun for you. I used to really like the place, but that was before I had been to St. Joe. This is all my opinion. I hope someone with a utility can chime in.

[movingman]

I have not been to Finger Lakes. I have been to St Joe.
Thanks for the info about the park. I was looking at some other forums and they said some of the same things about Finger Lakes. I think I am going to go down to St Joe instead.
I also see that you can ride at Mark Twain National Forest does anyone have any info on that park.

[punchy]

;D My wife and I went to Mark Twain a few years back on her very first ride.We enjoyed it . The trails were marked good and there was some easy and hard trails . Some were rocky but not bolder type more like large stone roads . The forest and trails were beautiful. It's along drive and if you go that far you might go a little farther north above Springfield there's a couple more parks up by Truman Reservoir.

[movingman]

So me and my father in law decided to go to Finger Lakes. It was a lot of fun. We spent about 4 hours at the park. It was larger than I thought it was going to be. I don't think we even saw half of the park in the time that we were there. They say they have 70 miles of trails and I think I put about 20 miles on my quad.
It was pretty slow going because the trails were not well groomed. Lots of ruts and low branches. They require a flag which is silly because by the end of the day you end up breaking it. It would have been nice if they had marked trails like in St Joe. There were many times that we would be going down a trail that seemed to be a main trail then it would just end or you would have too steep of an incline to get our quads up.

The north end of the park was really muddy. I had a lot of fun up there but again you would have to backtrack a lot because the trails just dead ended or would run into marsh like mud.

For an experienced rider I think that the park is great. The mx track looked amazing. I had a lot of fun trying to find the best way to get through some areas. There were some places that I was not able to get into because I didn't want my father-in-law to have any problems with.

I would say it is not a great place for a new rider, but my father in law did really well. Again there were lots of ruts that I think made him pretty nervous. For the most part you could get around them. Some times you would get through a really challenging area only to run into something that is just as tough, and going back sometimes was not an option. At a certain point we started get off our quads and walking the trail to make sure if we spent the time to get though there was still a trail.
So all in all for my riding style and preferences I felt the park was great.

There were lots of placed to get into the mud

[ubnpast]

So it's still like I had previously described. The flag thing is stupid there, because like you said, you break them off everytime you turn around because of the low hanging branches. It has possibilities to be great like St. Joe, but for some reason, they don't want to put the money into that park, or the folks who run it, just dont care anymore.