Where to Ride

For most of us, going riding starts hours before you buckle your belts and twist a UTV’s ignition key or push a start button. There’s loading up, gassing up, checking routes, picking up friends, and sometimes fishin’, fightin’, fixin’ flats and depending on your routine and the characters you ride with, who knows what else. UTV Action editors have to ride to where we ride just like you do most of the time, in a hurry in vehicles that have big numbers on their odometers. We’ve had our share of ride-delaying tickets,…

One of Americas favorite activities is camping and of course riding. We have put together a list of ten KOA campgrounds you can stay at and while you are there hit the trails all in one trip. We will add to this list as we discover more KOA properties that are OHV friendly. What sets KOA’s apart from other campgrounds or RV parks is the extra amenities they typically offer like pools, showers and laundry. Furthermore, they are very kid and pet friendly which we also like. Enjoy your vacation and send us a postcard or tag us…

-- Great places to take your UTV -- Story & photos by Mike Bennett The world is a book, and those who do not travel only read one page. This story actually starts out 30 years ago when, as a teenage boy, I read an article in a magazine featuring the sand dunes of Silver Lake, Michigan. In the days before the World Wide Web, printed stories and word of mouth were how we found out about new places to ride. The pictures were stunning, and it was certainly different from the terrain I was used to riding in Ontario, Canada.…

-- Joining the fun at Moab, Utah --    Before the very first Rally on the Rocks, promoters questioned people about five possible rally locations, and the majority voted for Moab, Utah’s famous slick rocks. Moab is a worldwide vacation destination boasting awesome red-rock formations and vistas overlooking the Colorado River. Arches and Canyonlands National Parks draw millions to Moab, and the myriad of trails surrounding Moab have long been a favorite of 4x4 fans, long before there were UTVs. Moab hosts the Easter Jeep…

-- The road riding rules for each state -- With more and more states wanting to attract OHV tourism to boost local economies, like West Virginia has with its Hatfield-McCoy Trail System and Utah has with its Paiute Trail System, many of these states are adopting more lenient regulations regarding licensing UTVs and ATVs for limited street use. Other states with agriculture-based economies treat UTVs and ATVs as farm vehicles, but urban areas generally don’t allow street use of UTVs and ATVs. Let’s check out requirements and…

There are well known ride areas like Glamis, Hatfield McCoy and Moab. During the riding season, you can expect big crowds, lots of vehicle traffic and very little solitude at the big name spots. If you are looking for an area with just as much riding, even more nature and less people, Bridgeport, California. It’s one of those places just far enough away from civilization that it doesn’t attract huge crowds and the riding is virtually unknown to many. We accessed the Eastern half of the trail system directly out of the…

-- Best way to see the Great Smokey Mountains National Park -- Mtn. Trax UTV Adventures is a business located in Townsend, Tennessee which is within the majestic scenery of the Smokey Mountains. They will rent you street legal UTVs for site-seeing adventures in Cades Cove, Rich Mountain, Tremont, Townsend, Elkmont, Gatlinburg, or any roads having a speed limit of 40 mph or less. The open air UTVs are a great way to experience the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a unique way. They offer two, four, and six-seater…

-- Knuckles Up Side X Side Off-Roading -- Riders are the cornerstone of our industry. It’s the people we meet and places we get to go to that make our sport great. Some like to go it alone, but more like to travel, camp and ride in groups. We want to celebrate riding groups that not only meet on the weekends, but they also gather during the week in chat rooms, forums and in Facebook groups to discuss past trips, plan new ones, and help each other with tech and setup issues. This month we are highlighting a California group…

-- Where to ride guide -- Utah is an off-road Mecca with a wide variety of OHVing experiences, and the state hosts 10 major UTV/ATV jamborees a year, with eight utilizing central Utah’s Paiute Trail System. Two jamborees fall outside of the “State of Sport’s” major trail system—Moab’s Rally on the Rocks in eastern Utah and the SxS Adventure Rally in the national-park-laden southwest. Literally next door the Zion National Park and the Dixie National Forest, Sand Hollow State Park has been hosting the major rock-crawling…

-- Where-To-Ride Guide -- Marysvale, Utah, hosted the ninth annual Paiute Trail Jamboree with more than 600 UTVs participating in free daily trail rides during the four-day festival. The Paiute Jam is one of eight held yearly on the celebrated 275-mile Paiute Trail #01, with thousands of miles of USFS two-track branching off of the main loop, and the August event is the only one to be free for trail riders and competition participants. Rally participants buy daily meal tickets, event T-shirts and raffle tickets, but the…

-- Tons of fun for everyone -- With attendance exceeding 10,000 people, the UTV Takeover put on three events in 2018, and we attended the first jamboree held at the south end of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Headquartered at Box Car Hill Campground at Coos Bay, the Oregon UTV Takeover had four days and nights of fun and free activities for UTVs, ATVs, families and children. Polaris put on demo rides with RZR Turbos, RS1s and 1000s, and sponsored the main stage, along with Florence Yamaha, while Rugged Radios…

-- What I did this summer, by Tim "Lumpy" Tolleson -- Wanting to get away from Southern California and the blistering heat of summer, I planned a working vacation in New Mexico’s high-altitude forests. My cousins, daughter, son-in-law and I planned a mini family reunion and rented an awesome cabin deep in the woods. Since I was also doing this month’s 50-inch UTV shootout between the new Can-Am Maverick Trail 1000 DPS and the Polaris RZR 900 EPS, I loaded them onto the UTV Action Aluma trailer and also loaded my Kawasaki…

-- A great place to have a WORCS race -- Way back in 2007, before there were World Off-Road Championship Series (WORCS) SxS races, Pismo Beach hosted a different kind of side-by-side racing. WORCS promoters laid out side-by-side courses through the beach dunes for ATVs and dirt bikes to race simultaneously. Now, 11 years later, WORCS brought back side-by-side racing at the Sand Hollow State Park near Hurricane, Utah. A combined ATV Pro and 450 Pro dirt bike 1.5-hour race saw the Pro classes start on the beach and race up…

-- Lumpy's favorite places to ride -- August is almost unbearable in the Mojave Desert, so the options are either ride at night or escape to higher altitudes or the dunes by the Pacific Ocean. Winchester Bay and Reedsport, Oregon, host DuneFest every July, and I’ve had a blast there in the past. The Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area is unique because much of it is covered by towering pines, so there are actual tunnels through the woods and worm tracks around the stands of trees. Banshee Hill is a blast, and there are…

If you are looking for a large event to attend with your family and friends this Summer, this guide is the perfect place to start.

-- The 3 best events of the year -- The original UTV Takeover event took place three years ago as an alternative to DuneFest and SandFest, which were taking place in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation area. Those events are good, but UTV Takeover creators Jim McIntire and Steve McCarthy knew they could do better. Capitalizing on the growing UTV movement, they took what people loved about the two premier dune events and launched the UTV Takeover. ATV and dirt bikes are, of course, still welcome to attend, and they do have…