14Th ORT – 2/23/13 Badlands Off-Road

I’ve been playing offroad for several years now, but never had the opportunity to make the trek out to the Badlands in Attica IN. One of my friends finally laid it out there that we needed to make a trip out there this year. So with the wife making a cabin reservation, the trip was on!

Friday Travel:

The wife and I took off early from work on Friday to take the scenic route to Turkey Run State Park where our cabin for the evening was located. As we escaped IL, there was still a decent amount of snow on the ground:

The snow started to thin out as we hit the two lane north of Terre Haute:

Eventually we turned onto gravel roads:

And hit up a covered bridge:

More gravel roads:

And another bridge:

More Gravel Roads:

And another bridge (noticing a pattern yet?):

We eventually quit wandering around, and made it to our next stop, and where we were staying for the night, Turkey Run State Park:

Since there was plenty of daylight left, we hiked out to the suspension bridge, and tried to make it back to the ‘bowl’:

Going back into the trail:

We got to prefect our “Thin Ice Crossing” technique. This mostly entailed running across the creek as fast as possible while the ice gave way under foot (the stream was only about 3” deep):

With daylight rapidly waning, we went back to the lodge for dinner:

And then made our way to the cabin to wait for our friends to arrive:

The next day, the wife set out to grab some early morning photos before we made the trip out to Attica:

Once the troops were rallied, we set off North on the back raods:

Hey, another covered bridge!

Then some more back roads:

To the last covered bridge of the trip:

Back on the pavement:

We reached our destination:

Airing down while we wait for the last member of the party to show up:

We traveled about 15 miles in the park (don’t ask me where all we went, as I was just playing follow the leader). I do dig this park, lots of ‘casual’ trail riding areas, with some open play areas. There are also some sections of the park that are similar to the property my club has access too (mining tailings piles). The old 4.0 will still happily rev to 5 grand when asked too! Not too shabby for a motor with 238k miles on it.

My favorite part of the park was the quarry play area. This seemed to be the consensus with the rest of our group as well. It’s hard to find big open areas in the Midwest where you can just go climb anything you see.

While there was snow/ice on the ground when we got to the park, there was still a surprising amount of traction to be found. Things got very sloppy as the temperature warmed up later in the day, but it wasn’t too bad to get around in.

Travel for the day:

Photos from the day (no I’m not even going to try to put things in order):

Nope, no way this truck is fitting through those tubes!

Group shot:

No carnage to report from the group. I did pull my hubs apart when I got home to find that water has once again gotten into things (I miss unit bearings). All the vehicles (truck included) made the trip without any hiccups.

Compiled video from my camera and the wife’s (mostly from the quarry area):