Sleepy Creek Lake is a Wildlife preservation area and campground that also has a shotgun range - public and free - that I will be making good use of once I obtain a shotgun. I got a lot of really good pics, so I will post as many as I can and put captions on them.
The main road was gravel and dirt, and riddled with potholes. 4WD wasn't really necessary at all on these roads, but the difference between having 4WD on and off was stark. With it off, any tap on the accelerator would either break the rear wheels loose and activate the traction control, or with the traction control off, start a slide (fun!). With 4WD on, it would hook up and just PULL as fast as I wanted it to go. I have never driven a 4WD vehicle before, so this experience was quite fun and educational.
- This is a shot of the lake and fishing pier.
- A shot of the truck at a little overlook area with some cool rock formations and my first ever water obstacle!
- Really cool rock formation. Sadly, it was just riddled with graffiti on the other side. :(
- My Very First Ever water obstacle. Clearly, I pansied out and hugged the side of it for fear of a hidden glass bottle or sharp rock that could have punctured my tire. Tires are expensive. So are 3 kids and a wife. Gotta have my priorities straight.. ;)
We made our way along all of the established gravel roads making a GPS trail on an app called ViewRanger that we have since figured out is pretty much worthless. Can't figure out a way to share the map between devices, but I got my wife to take a screenshot of the map:
- According to the app, we traveled 102km (63.4 miles), none of which on pavement.
The trail got more interesting after exploring the established roads.
We found a hidden campsite probably used by employees of the park:
- Hidden campsite
- Truck next to hidden campsite fire ring.
- Discarded Bud Light bottle at the hidden campsite :(
There are also these big tracts of land that have been just clear cut (using chains I imagine) for Ruffed Grouse to live in. These serve as the backbone for a lot of the trails we found, I guess most of them were used for logging equipment. Seems to be an ongoing operation as we found some heavy machinery along the way. Pictures and trail report continued in next post.
Great start with the wife and kids, Ray, way to go! My family grew up going on outings like that here in BC, exploring trails, camping out, and generally having a ball. I seemed to always have one or more of their friends along, too, as none of their parents did that kind of "cool" stuff. 
