Adventure in Ohio?

invisible monster & I are meeting up at the Pit Stop (Exxon) at the I77 & SR821 (exit 6) interchange Sunday @ 11AM. Headed east & around, should end up in Woodsfield. Plan to maximize gravel, nothing too nasty since its been raining for several days down here, should be big bike friendly. He'll be on a 690, I'll be trying to keep up on a WRR, wait I'm supposed to be leading. Chance of rain, but warm. Just show up if you want to ramble through Washington & Monroe Cos. If I know you're coming we can be sure to leave after you arrive.

When I get back, I'll have almost three months before I head back to work, so I'm planning a few multi-day trips. Something that caught my eye is the Trans Eastern Trail (TET). I see that it's worked its way to our eastern border and another leg is snaking to our south.



I think it would be awesome to add to this network of trails, but you guys know these roads a lot better than I do. Is it possible to ride from Wheeling to Huntington on a (mostly) dirt route through Ohio?

I get Fox's Den and the Fox Hole confused, Fox's Den is in Cleveland and about as low-rent and nasty as the Fox Hole is.

A few folks here were talking about making a trans-Ohio leg. I'm not sure if it ever got off the ground or not.

Btw, I've done the wheeling south to glenville stretch of that route a couple time. Good stuff, although they were paving much of it because of the drilling/oil boom.

dont forget the Foxhole in Zanesville, which, from all accounts I've read, is pretty much a dump:

https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&cid=1516871624579173236&q=Foxhole&iwloc=A&gl=US&hl=en

Or the Golden Fox at 161/71

closed: http://www.yelp.com/biz/gold-fox-show-bar-the-columbus

Never really got off the ground, but I think if we sectioned it off by counties that people are very familiar with, it could still be done - but there would probably still be fairly long stretches of two-lane roads.

you guys are DEFINITELY getting wet:

http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive/43130:4?interactiveMapLayer=radar&baseMap=r&zoom=7

have fun

Yeah, I have resigned myself to the fact that it will be rainy on Sun. My weather app had been showing a chance of partly cloudy but now it's just predicting overcast/rain. Temps look to be ok though so unless it is a torrential downpour here when I'm getting ready to leave I'll be up for the ride.

It has been started, we rode 2 sections a couple weeks ago

The Minerva to near wheeling ride?

yes, but the 2nd half of the southern portion towards where we stopped sucked, so that has to be redone.

Never know, may ride down that way this weekend and play in the rain

Anthing I can do to help? I can't ride, but I can research and organize like a mo-fo. I spent an hour going through Garmin MapSource looking for unimproved roads (dashed lines) north of Huntington and west of Wheeling. I'm sure this isn't all of them because the gravel roads I know around Lake Hope are marked like any other secondary road.

What is the goal? From Wheeling south or some south then east meander? It looks like there are several options in WV.

Here's an original thread: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=747559

Not sure what the original goal is/was. We don't really have any other neighboring states with trans-routes to link too, just WV.

That being said, if we could get it from WV up to Michigan or down back to KY or IN, perhaps they'd become motivated to add on to it.

EDIT; looks like KY has an off road loop we could tie into. It's about 60 miles south of the Shawnee State Forest / Portsmouth area. It'd be cool to get our Ohio route over the the Augusta (KY) Ferry crossing.

Goal:

Get to my house to East Liver pool. That needs fine tuned

East Liverpool to Kentucky Have points 3/4 of the way to US70. I had a good set from near the S bridge North but somehow managed to lose them. It went from there to Uhrichsville.

So far I have points from near me in Massillon south to Coshocton and or Newcommerstown.

Baltic is as far NE as you can get before chip-seal becomes the norm.

Dundee to Wilmot will be back if and when they replace the bridge. Wilmot to Brewster is 80% gravel.

There is also the 1st state route that runs from Millersburg to Port Washington which isn't too bad. I had some tracks from Loudenville to Coshocton Also.


Here's the bad part. My bikes all have 7+ gallon tanks and I keep forgetting to make sure to get near fuel.

There's way more gravel around there than shown.

Garmin (at least on my GPS) regularly shows dotted lines when the road si actually paved, and more often shows a solid line when the road is actually gravel, goat track, or non existent.

Yeah, found the same on Garmin's mapping. When in doubt, I'd check the county (most have some mapping online) and then look on Google Earth and view way down to check the road. The way to tell gravel from concrete from the aerial view (and it can be difficult) is to look for anything crossing the road, especially what are surely gravel or dirt access ways. They'll match the road surface and color...whereas paved they'll be different. Also abandon roads will often look rutted, but not consistently (which might happen with tire wear on pavement). The ruts will come and go on dirt or gravel.

I've been wrong here and there, but mostly you can figure out gravel and abandoned roads from the aerial view. If it's entirely covered by trees, that's usually a good sign it's abandoned too...or at the very least a pretty road.

Is there anything that swingset doesn't know about? :huh