If you’re going to go to Fontana Village and you bike or hike the trails are a must.
The trails are only semi-marked and share portions of the trails with the resort roads and frisbee golf roads. You can pick up a decent map of the trails at the front desk which is better than nothing but still slightly confusing.
The lady at the front desk was not helpful at all when I inquired about the trail system. She handed me the map and that and gave no other direction. The map has good descriptions of each trail on one side and you can see which trail is which on the map side but the trails overlap each other and the entire map seemed upside down to me. Nevertheless, we pushed forward and headed out to find one of these trails.
From the resort we made our way down the resort road and took the first right towards the main highway. Just prior to getting the highway, Riley spotted what looked like a trail and was part of the frisbee golf system. The road was slightly paved (deteriorated asphalt) until we hit the next hole about 100 yards up. From there the trail elevation climbed and followed the road.
At many points we could still see where we were in relation to the resort and the resort road. Directly in front of the resort check-in (or behind the resort, depending on how you look at it) was the first trail sign we found. Although it had trail names on it, it was confusing and I couldn’t exactly match it up to the map I was given at the front desk.
We decided to not go any farther up in elevation so we stayed parallel to the resort and the trail become fun for me and made Riley a little hesitant to ride down some of the hills.
There were a few more Y’s and T’s in the trail but we just stayed to the right until we ended up popping out on the resort road again. This time we were on the east side of the resort and we rode on the resort road back around to where we started.
Since we were short on time and I was riding with my 7 year old sign we only barely scratch the surface of the network of trails available to ride. With more time and more supplies I could ride the trails and go all over the resort for days. I have AT&T and had no service anywhere on the resort so if you rely on your phone for GPS use another method if you need it.
I know it was late in the season when we went, but there wasn’t anyone else on the trail with us, which was nice. I’m sure there were people out on the trails somewhere, but for Riley and I it felt like we were the only ones out there.
There is so much more to see, we will be back.
Our Life Goal is to get out and Live!
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