 Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland PBS with host Bethany Wesley. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airports, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at NiswaTax.com. Welcome back to Lakeland Currents, I'm Bethany Wesley. Minnesota has more than 2,000 miles of trail that cater to all-terrain vehicles, off-highway motorcycles, and off-road vehicles. Locally, ATV and OHV enthusiasts band together through the Northwood Riders OHV Club. But there is more to this club than just trail rides. Here to tell us about the Northwood's riders and what they do are Travis Hattine, the club president, and Michelle Vould, the club secretary. Welcome. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having us. So as we get started, let's talk a little bit about what your role is with the club. So secretary, I'm assuming you just kind of help keep things on track, do the minutes, the kind of recording kind of information? Yes, and any paperwork that needs to be done for any maintenance or anything that's done on the trails is submitted by me. Okay, so how long have you been involved with the club? I believe I've been with it since 2014. And Travis, have you been president for a long time? No, just actually about two months now, just in April I was elected president. So I've been involved with the club for just over a year now. I've been involved with ATV and snowmobiling my whole life growing up with it. Is that how you initially got involved with OHV-EEN as a kid? Yes. Was it like a family thing? Yeah, my dad was the one that started the snowmobile club back in Roseau County. So I've been involved with the clubs and activities my whole life. I was taught snowmobile safety training and then I moved here to Bemidji in 2016 and found the club and thought it'd be a good way to get to know people and get to know more things in the area. Michelle, how were you introduced to the sport or how did you kind of get interested in it? I guess we just started attending meetings and thought this was something we needed to be involved in. It's a fun family get together. So tell me what the club is. How long has it been around? Is it new? Has it been established for a while? The club originally started back in the late 70s. We've been around for about 38, almost 40 years now. So it's kind of been a lot of different people have been involved with it and different presidents and board members throughout the years. Okay. Would you say your membership has been growing, kind of declining? Are you pretty stable? I would say probably originally, I would say it's growing still. I think every year we've been getting more people. About how many do you have members? Approximately right now as of 2017 we had 125 members and when it first started there was about 12. So it's certainly grown though, it has grown. Tell me about the footprint. Like are you pretty Bemidji proper? Are you kind of Beltrami County? Where do your members come from? They're come from all over. Actually a lot of them are around the Bemidji area, the Beltrami County. We have a lot of people that come from out of state to come for rides and around the area, being that Bemidji is kind of a tourist area. I think we see a lot more than just Bemidji area people you see from out of state, out of town, distances that are people are traveling to come here. Okay. We've had them come as far as Grand Forks from Cass Lake. So okay, we want to talk about some of the definitions because for those who maybe are not familiar with exactly OHV, ATVs, all the acronyms. So let's just go with pretty basic. ATV is all terrain vehicle. Correct. So OHV is what exactly? Off-highway vehicle which includes like your bigger pickups and jeeps, vehicles of that sort. Okay. Motorcycles, side-by-sides. Okay. So does your membership reflect that then? I mean do you have pretty much a wide variety? Are they pretty specific ATVs or? 99% ATV I would say. Okay. Do you get a lot of like the dirt bikes? Like those kind of things? Is that in the umbrella or is that a little separate? As far as our club, not necessarily so many of them I don't that I've noticed. That aren't a part of the club. Yeah. You know, you might see them out cruising the trails, but not. But they're not members of the club. Right. Correct. All right. Have you seen that changing at all? I mean has there been any emergence of more that you're starting to see more interest in it and maybe something that's less traditional? I think it's more and more and more people are getting with the side-by-side your class 2 ATVs where people can go to people sitting side-by-side, riding long through the trails enjoying it, getting to actually have a conversation and talk about things where traditionally before it was just a one-person vehicle. Okay. So I think with the popularity of the side-by-side or your class 2 ATV you're seeing a lot more growth in the sport too. Okay. So if you have side-by-sides that are kind of emerging instead of one person, does that make them wider? Like do the trails still accommodate those? Our trails still accommodate it. You know, most of our trails are at least eight feet wide and usually try to go wider so we don't have we can meet in 90% of the spots without an issue. Okay. I want to talk kind of about kind of your typical or average member. So are the individuals, are they families? I would say we're probably, it's kind of in between. We've got both. I mean, but it seems like we're building more families that are coming aboard, which is great. Do you find that it's kind of a family sport though? So like if dad or joins that maybe the family follows with it, you know what I'm saying? Once one person gets involved, do the others kind of come? Yes. I would say. Okay. All ages? I mean, what's your youngest? I mean, how young do you have, right? I was out on the trails last night and actually saw a side-by-side going down the road two people in it with a car seat with a child in the car seat. So your variety and you know, it all depends what people show up with at the times of the meetings. But I know we've had people that are four years old out on our club rides. Okay. Up to almost 80. Is it predominantly male, female? I mean, are there stereotypes? You know, is it all genders, all socio-economic? Is it the whole range? All genders. I think it's a pretty broad range. You know, you get a lot of families that are involved, husband and wife, or you get individuals that you see too. But I think we have a really broad, it isn't just one demographic by any means. I think your stereotype is it's a male sport, but I don't think, I don't really believe in that anymore. I said we see way more family involvement or couple involvement. Oh, that's got to be fun. Kind of get to showcase that and kind of show that it's not what maybe people think in their head. Correct. Interesting. Okay. So tell me what, what do you like about riding? When you're out riding, Michelle, what is it that you really enjoy? What does it you look forward to doing? What's the allure? You know, living in Northern Minnesota, there are so many beautiful images out there. And unless you're able to get out into the backwoods to actually see what we have, it's, it's for me, it's just relaxing. You get to meet new people. It's just a wonderful way to just spend a good quality day with family and friends. What about you? What do you really look forward to it? Is it the thrill? Is it the speed? Is it? To me, it's kind of a combination. The biggest thing to me, it's just getting away from that day to day life, hectic, chaotic, your work environments, your whatever it is. It's just a way to get away from a check out of reality for a period of time. You know, getting out to see different things, getting out to new areas, exploring, spending some time with friends and family. Okay. So if you talk to somebody who kind of has interest in the sport, but they're not really quite ready to fully commit, right? I would imagine that that's kind of an expensive endeavor to fully commit. How do you kind of encourage someone to kind of take those initial steps? Is there, is there a way you can try it without buying a whole machine? There's ways you can. You can rent machines from various areas. Me, I always try to have, bring other people with. You know, if we have extra machines or spaces available, I always try to encourage new people to come with. Here, take my machine and come with us. We'll show you around and make it a short trip, a long trip, whatever a person likes, or whatever, how we'll gauge on their interest and enjoyment of it at the time. Okay. Do you have any tips for someone who maybe perhaps wants to get started and doesn't really know how to really find that entry point right away? I mean, just connecting with someone who does it, is that the best way to approach it? Yeah. I think it is. I think another good way to reach out is to get to your clubs. You have your social media outlets. Hey, I would like to be interested in this, see it. Is there any way that somebody would have a spot where I could ride with? You know, I would love to see some more people try and reach out to us other than somebody that you know or you know of and specifically. Because you know they're out there, right? That there are people who watch you go and ride, and they're like, oh, it'd be fun to try it. I just don't know where to start. I want to talk about some of the regulations and some of the more paperwork stuff. Do you need a license to drive? No, you do not. Age 12, anyone born after July of 1987 has to have ATV safety training. So anyone under 12 also has to have it and go through it. There's various different ways we can go about training. There's an online portion, depending upon your age, that you can get it and then you have some of them actually have to have a class where you have to go and do a driving portion of it also. Oh, well, okay. So if someone needs to find those resources, where would they go to try to locate that information? The best bet is to go to your DNR website, Minnesota DNR, or else you can reach out to your local ATV clubs. The clubs are always a great organization for resources and knowledge of both areas and rules and regulations. Usually they're pretty familiar with it and have contacts to your conservation officers and stuff that can get a specific question answered for you. Okay, so if I'm hearing you right, you don't actually host the trainings, but you could help direct people to where they need to go to get these. We will be doing our first day training here in August. We're working on getting all set up and finalized here, so we will be putting that on every year also. Have you done that before? Is that new? Um, this will be new for most of us. For all of us actually. So that's not an online, and that's where somebody would physically go and be able to just take part in like a class kind of setting? They have to have an online portion of it. There has to be an online class that they do online. There's a bunch of questions they have to do. They have to answer a test and then they print out a certification, and then they can bring that to us to do the driving portion of it. And then for anyone under 16 or 18 has to go through that and has to have both forms. You have to have the online certification, and then you have to have the driving part, and then we send that into the DNR, and then you will get an actual certification card from the DNR. Oh, okay. Speaking generally, I mean, in your experiences, has it been a safe sport? I mean, have you had problems or is it pretty safe? It's been very safe. We have not had any encounters with any issues along the trails whatsoever. And between the Schoolcraft Trail and then the Wilton Trail North, we've got approximately 75 miles of trails, and there's not been... Do you think that's a misconception? Do you hear from people sometimes who aren't familiar with the sport that, oh, I would never let my kid or I don't want to get involved, it's not safe? I think there's always them notions out there of them things, because like everything bad news travels fast. So I think that's where a lot of people get them misconceptions. And people that don't know the sport and know what safety devices there are, ways to protect yourself and be safe about the sport. Okay. I want to move kind of more into the actual club itself and what it is you guys do. So how do you describe what you do to people who are unfamiliar? What is it that, is it about the trail rides? Is it about more than that? Where is the focus? Each month when we do our meetings, we've got old news that we cover. We have new news, anything that anybody wants to talk about. We've got banking information that we talk about. Monthly rides are trail maintenance. Club activity is how to get new people involved, new businesses involved, where to go, different issues that come up. We deal with people, some of the stereotypes that you have is it's a destructive sport. Well, I don't quite agree with that one either because we spend a lot of time maintaining and helping preserve this stuff so we can keep it going too. Okay. And by not, you know, by having these trails, we aren't utilizing the approaches as much as what people used to utilize. So you're not, you know, if somebody is going up somebody's driveway and they're gonna mash on it, you don't have to worry about that anymore because you're back, you're in the backwards. Okay. The trails can keep you off of that situation. Yes. Let's talk about these trails. We've brought them up a couple times. There's I think something like 54, correct me if I'm wrong, in the state. Correct. Okay. There's two main ones kind of that you guys focus on here locally. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So where are they? Give or take. We have our Wilton Trail North System, which is basically at the intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 89, just west of Bemidji. Okay. And then we have our school craft trail system, which would be kind of near Beltrami, Hubbard County line. Okay. Are they pretty comparable in terms of length? The North System I think is a little bit longer. Yeah. I think the North System is about 40 miles. Give or take a few there. And the school craft, the south side there is approximately 20-ish, 25. So is there a kind of that sweet spot in terms of a good length to really try to hit? Like when you go out riding, is it like it's not really worth it unless it's X long or, you know, is there, is there a target? I think that's kind of a personal preference, you know. I go out with some groups that will go out and put on 150 miles in a day and other people think that's just unheard of and other people so they have the conception that it's a 20-mile day. You know, we've did it a lot of times just go out after work and take the grill with and cook hot dogs along the trail in the woods and you've put on 20 miles that night, but you just got out away from things and enjoy nature. So if you go out riding just on your own, just not necessarily with the group, just for your own enjoyment, do you usually pass others? Like are they well used enough to the point that when you go out you expect to see others or is it more solitary? Oh yes, I mean there's, you're passing lots of people on the trails. They're well used. Very well used, yes. Okay. Are they strictly OHV trails? Do you have to share them with other uses? Most of them are a shared use trail. There are some specific areas that you get into that are just your dirt bikes or your motorcycles that are some that are just class 1 ATVs. Some are OHV, meaning like your Jeep side pickups and stuff. So it all depends on the area where you're at. What about these two specifically? Most of it is actual multifunction trail of what we have. Okay. All right. Who maintains the trails? I know you guys talked about doing cleanups. Is it kind of left up to you to keep them in good shape? Yes. Correct. Okay. How do you do that? How often? Kind of on an as-needed basis, every spring and every fall we always make sure we go out and do garbage pickup, cleaning up, you know, there's always litter around things. We put out garbage cans to help prevent a lot of that stuff. We try to, you know, storms. There's always trees falling down in the woods and everything. So we're always out there constantly cutting trees, maintaining the right-of-ways kind of brush mowing and along that. Just some other areas. We've did some pretty extensive work, you know, thousands of dollars and getting heavy equipment in there doing work to repair areas from storm washout or widening trails. So you kind of clean them up once in the spring, right? Kind of as the season gets started. Yes. And then once kind of as it ends. Yes. Of course, no mobile season. Okay. I'm sure they appreciate that. Yes. And then throughout the season if there was a storm or if you guys are riding them off it enough, I'm assuming a member would tell you, Travis, something's looking off on school craft? Yes. We're out there pretty frequently. You know, that's the nice thing with some of this stuff. We have some social media outlets or websites and places where people, if they see an area of concern they've brought, you know, they've messaged us so we can take care of that stuff to eliminate some of the hazards or areas of garbage that have been dumped from who knows what. Would you say that our area has, I mean, obviously they're good trails. You keep them up to date, but I mean good in terms of an amount of trails is are we lucky to have the trails that we have here versus other parts of the state? Or, I mean, is it, you wish you had more? There's always room for growth. We're, you know, on some of our the school craft trail, we don't have a lot of off trails off the main trail and it would be nice to be able to, right. It'd be nice to extend the school craft trail and go towards the Beside area and eventually hook up to the Wilton trail. On the Wilton trail, it would be nice to expand into some of the snowmobile trails that are already exceeded out there and go on to some of the other local establishments in town just to help give them more business as well. So there's always room for growth and we're hoping in the next couple years that we can expand some more. Okay. That's kind of part of us as a club. You know, we're kind of the ones that start to drive a lot of that development of the trails, you know, without a lot of your organizations. I don't feel you'd see a lot of growth of these trail systems. They won't be put out there. You know, it's a pretty big misconception that the DNR actually maintains the trails. Well, the DNR has very little maintenance of the trails. It's your local organizations are what's actually maintaining it, keeping them open for everyone. Okay. So if you have a club like yourself that's pretty on top of it in terms of maintenance, does that make it perhaps more likely that they'd be open to expanding more because they know that you're fairly responsible with them? Definitely. You know, we have inspections from the DNR and the county people that are out and they monitor what we're doing and make sure we're keeping up with what we're doing. And we have we're out with them recently and they were very impressed with what we're doing and have any complaints of anything. So they're, you know, that goes along ways in helping the public see it that we're trying to maintain it and so we can develop more stuff too. What is the process for adding trails? Like who is it just you write letters and hope that is it the DNR? I mean is it who do you have to kind of sway? It's kind of goes through a few people. We end up going with the working with the DNR. We work with townships. We work with county officials, state land, private land. It all depends where the trail is that we're really looking to go. It depends what kind of land you're looking across and are we looking to utilize some kind of a trail that's already there or do we want to cut down a path through wooded area already? So if you have an area that you're like gosh it'd be really nice to use this land it really comes down to whoever that land loaner or the governmental entity that oversees it. That has a lot to do with it, yes. Would you say there's different types of trails in terms of like skill levels like is there a beginning trail that you know you'd kind of say well start here until you get used to it go to this one's a little bit more rougher you know are there different levels? I think there definitely is in some areas. I don't know on our trail system that we have I guess the the Wilton Trail maybe is a little more basic the beginning part of it as it's an old railroad grade so it's pretty straight flat pretty basic and then from there there's off chutes of that that get into more technical areas if you want really technical areas there's OHV parks that are up you know there's a several of them around the area you know up towards Gilbert Hibbing up on the Iron Range stuff they have different a lot of different degree of technical riding there that are labeled so you can get into some more rock climbing areas or just basic trails if you want to. And that really comes down to what the interest is right because you talked more about maybe the camaraderie and kind of the being with other people versus really seeking a thrill. Yeah okay I want to move into the camaraderie portion as long as we brought it up so tell me about the group lights how often do you host them? We are aiming towards doing them twice a month now this year just stopping along the trail take out the girl cook hot dogs have some chips visit introduce people to other trails that might be off of the main trails that we're riding just having fun something different. So you kind of just put it out that this is the day we're meeting this is the time come on out we're going to go for a ride and it's more than just the ride then it's also the stopping and the talking and the visiting. We always make sure we stop and talk with people you know kind of keep track of everyone making sure that everybody knows where we're going you know if they have questions that they can see what we're trying to do you know if we're hey this is an area we're trying to look at developing a trail through here that's one of our goals or you know make sure people get to introduce and meet each other. Is there an average number of members that you aim to have at those rides to make it quote-unquote worth it you know I'm saying is there a number that we really need to have at least a dozen kind of thing or we're just grateful when anybody shows up yeah I mean it can range from you can range from having 10 people to we've had 50 yeah it's interesting you talk about the camaraderie because when you think about people riding vehicles you think perhaps it's hard to talk but it's because you make these stops and have visits and you know whether you have food or not okay is it more fun if you have more people with you? I think that's kind of a personal preference you know some people like to go a long distance and just want to go and I think with a big group that can be difficult sometimes and then there's other people that just are just want to get out and see a little bit go out for an hour either so whoever shows up I guess a lot of it's personal preference I feel. Do you kind of alternate between the two trails then I mean is that kind of yes if you do it twice a month once here once there yes is that kind of okay we've went different areas you know we've tried to connect up to there's other trail systems that our systems will link to and try to get people out to see some of them too. Okay do you ever go outside of our area like do you ever go like take a road trip out toward Duluth area I mean do you ever go outside of northwest? We haven't yet um it's the thing that I've thought about that can maybe be a good idea to try to have some of these clubs work together and get people out knowing about some other areas too. Okay other than just coming together for the camaraderie and the fun of it all what other purpose does it sell it send does it show people the strength of your numbers at all like when they see you all coming as a big group does it like wow there's a lot more of these than we thought? I think there is there's some truth to that you know here it gets people out um you know we have put maps out that we look for advertising people to help pay for some of these costs as we're all a non-profit we have to generate our own income um and I think if you can see some of them larger groups of people out you know some of your businesses are probably more likely to um look at advertising and helping out with some of these things. Okay You've mentioned that you have sponsors right you do have companies that have supported your club and your mission what do you get from that what does a sponsorship kind of do what is it what's what's the purpose? I think the to me the big purpose is it's bringing people aware to it you know helping business partners helping to promote the sport um helping you know do some of the funding of it like I said we have to um the DNR we do this work to help maintain the trails and then we resubmit it to the DNR but the DNR does not pay for everything that we submit either you know we only get a portion of what we submit to them back so there we're always looking for extra funding I think another thing there is it's you know it's a place where people can get information about an organization from to do the sponsorships and like when you see like when you're out driving around if you find out I think like backwards right I think yes okay one of your sponsors um does it help kind of I don't want to say legitimize because you're certainly legitimate but does it help I'm sure you have run into misconceptions where people are just anti-18 years they think that it's destructive which you've said it's not does it help to kind of help combat that does that make sense does it help to be able to show them that no we're not we're actually fairly respectful I think so yes I think it definitely helps with that I said you know you have other businesses that are I don't think any business that is going to associate with a negative organization or a negative group you know I don't think how many business people want to be associated with negativity I guess is my way of it is there an impact on the economy through this do you know what I'm saying like is there a big enough group that it really helps drive you know the economy you all go out you all have you know meetings at different places of business what is the impact are there more of you than we think yes I yes there is we try to utilize each one of the establishments that you know that we have trails that go up to as far as restaurants or bars or whatever and then we try to do our monthly meetings we try to rotate between those facilities each month so that we can kind of bring that business that direction to we help promote their business bring business and people to them also okay interesting so if someone's watching this now and they have an interest in learning more or perhaps even getting involved where would they go what what should they do they can go to our website which is northwoodsriders.com you can also find us on facebook and otherwise you can reach out to any one of us okay all right what does a membership get to a degree you know what is the what does it get you know you contribute to the to the club right which helps your trails which keeps all the the interest going in your hobby but is there something you know is there is there more to it you know with your with your membership you know we you get a lot more information on a lot of the sports some of these areas to go we try to promote trail closures trails opening new trails other club activities other activities of other clubs also you know it helps camaraderie it helps get you introduced other people i think you see a lot more than just what you know helps establish the trail system you know it's kind of a strengthen numbers thing you know hey we have 300 people that are interested in this instead of 12 or whatever your numbers are well listen i want to thank you guys for coming on thanks for telling us all about the club and the trails and other information in terms of how to get involved so thank you for joining me today if you're interested in learning more about the club the website here is on the bottom of the screen through that website you can also access their facebook page so thank you for joining me please join me next time