Iron Range Off-Highway Vehicle State Recreation Area

Iron Range Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) State Recreation Area

—Gilbert, MN—

A few months ago I heard a debate about adding a new off-road vehicle recreation area on Minnesota Public Radio.  At the time I really didn't understand what they were talking about.  After visiting the Iron Range Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) State Recreation Area, I know a lot more about this topic.

The premise behind the park is pretty interesting: it provides an environment for people to drive their OHV in a safer, more environmentally-friendly, controlled manner.  Here is what the Minnesota DNR has to say about the park: "Come and experience Minnesota's premier off-highway vehicle recreation area, located in Gilbert.  With 36 miles of OHV trails, whether you ride an ATV, an OHM, or an ORV, there is something for you! Trails range from Easy to More Difficult to Most Difficult..."

When we got the park, we didn't know to expect, but it was a busy place.  Luke ran inside to talk to the ranger (we were headed back to Biwabik for the evening and figured we had just enough time to jump off the highway and do a small detour to get this recreation area before it closed) while Marcus and I waited in the car.  We could see all kinds of ATVs, jeeps, and dirt bikes zooming by behind us.  It was busy!  It also looked like a really fun place to go if you are into ATVs or dirt biking.  In fact, if you are and live in Minnesota, I would definitely say you have to come here at least once!

The ranger gave Luke some advice on where the best place to park would be, and we headed off for our final adventure of the day.  One thing that was different here is that this was NOT a multi-cache (maybe the only time this happened) and so we only had to go to where the coordinates told us.  On the other hand, this is probably the one time we had to most be on our guard with all of the motorbiking activity and crisscrossing trails around.  But because we just had to find one spot, it made it so much easier than most of the parks.  I think this is just because they didn't want too many people wondering around the park on foot with all of the activity.

We had gotten to the park right about a hour before it closed, so we were moving quickly right away.

Check out the red soil.  I think some of our shoes are still ochre-colored weeks later!

Like we said, there was a LOT of activity here, and there was the sound of buzzing engines coming from every direction, fading in and out the whole time.  Very hilly terrain and surprisingly easy to get turned around with all these crisscrossing trails despite the fact that you don't really go that far in and there is not too much foliage!

When we got further up the trail, the GPS directions turned us into the woods and off the trail.  We left behind the trail and started walking into the woods.  This was actually a nice trade-off because it was a bit safer for us to let Marcus walk on the ground by himself in the trees.  The people on the bikes were actually not going that extremely fast, so it was generally safe to just carry Marcus along.  Every minute or so we could here another group coming down the trail we were on and just had to step aside.

It didn't take us long for us to see the tree ahead.  Marcus was getting pretty excited.  He knew what was coming!

Can you see the box back there "hiding"?—as Marcus would say.

A closer view.

We opened the box and found the card.  This was not a very busy geocache...  I think that this cache was mostly visited by serious geocachers and people like us who were working to finish the entire avian adventure... you really have to go out of the way to get to it.  But it was worth it.

We got the card and started to head back down.  We decided to take a different trail on the way down, and we were happily surprised by the view.

It wasn't too wooded up here, so we had a pretty good view of things as we trekked along.

Atop the hill, looking out over Gilbert ahead of us.

A pretty panoramic of the valley from the hilltop.

We hiked back to the car and started to head out of the park.  One of the interesting things about this park is that it has a wash-down station so people are able to remove the red soil from their Jeeps/ATVs/bikes...  It was fun to look at the OHV's and all that fun stuff going on here.

I bet people come from a long ways away to play at this park.

Check out the jacked-up pick up.

Cleaning their ATV off at the water station.  Lots of red clay!!!

With this bird card we are so close to done.  All that is left is two stops and three geocaches... so excited!

I didn't get a good picture of everything, but we were all pretty dirty from the red soil.  It got all over our shoes, pants, and even a bit on our faces from all of the dirt flying from the OHVs in the park.

See my red feet! That what I get for wearing sandals to this rec area!