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Wednesday, June 18th
...Eventually we made it to the McCubbins Off-Highway Vehicle area. Although this area is only part of the proposed solution to off-road, motorized recreation on the national forest, this is also the sight of some of the highest density of current trail systems. An existing powerline that is currently part of the OHV access trails travels up and over several steep slopes that I found difficult to walk on and scary to watch a motorcycle navigate up and down. There are numerous user-created trails leading off into the forest from the designated trails. For more than a mile, the proposed pipeline route expands the existing corridor an extra 50-100 ft. I thought the last few days of my walk would feel so exciting, but it was some of the hardest, most depressing points of the walk. Families of ATVs spilled 
out of the forest, the deafening roar of their engines bouncing off the landscape and giving me a dizzying loss of direction. At one point, Candace and I found ourselves standing on an ATV trail looking down the glare of an agitated bull cow. By the time I sat down at a picnic table in the McCubbins Camgpround, our endpoint to the hike, a day ahead of schedule, ten days later than I'd started at Fish Creek, I found myself overwhelmed by the surroundings and the reality of it being over....
...Eventually we made it to the McCubbins Off-Highway Vehicle area. Although this area is only part of the proposed solution to off-road, motorized recreation on the national forest, this is also the sight of some of the highest density of current trail systems. An existing powerline that is currently part of the OHV access trails travels up and over several steep slopes that I found difficult to walk on and scary to watch a motorcycle navigate up and down. There are numerous user-created trails leading off into the forest from the designated trails. For more than a mile, the proposed pipeline route expands the existing corridor an extra 50-100 ft. I thought the last few days of my walk would feel so exciting, but it was some of the hardest, most depressing points of the walk. Families of ATVs spilled 
out of the forest, the deafening roar of their engines bouncing off the landscape and giving me a dizzying loss of direction. At one point, Candace and I found ourselves standing on an ATV trail looking down the glare of an agitated bull cow. By the time I sat down at a picnic table in the McCubbins Camgpround, our endpoint to the hike, a day ahead of schedule, ten days later than I'd started at Fish Creek, I found myself overwhelmed by the surroundings and the reality of it being over....
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