Texas Adventure

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01/03/08

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The Ouachita (pronounced WASH-ee-taw) National Forest (Ouachita NF) is the south’s oldest national forest and encompasses 1.8 million acres in west central Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma.  Containing multiple mountain ranges, the Ouachita NF extends 225 miles east to west from Little Rock, AR to Atoka, OK and approximately 60 miles north to south.  An extensive system of ~6000s miles of paved & non-paved roads and ~150 miles of single track make the Ouachita NF a fantastic playground for adventure, dual sport, and off-road motorcyclists. 

Unfortunately, good information  about the various adventure, dual sport, or off-road riding opportunities available in the Ouachita NF is scarce.  Additionally, the information that is available is both incomplete and scattered across many different sources making it difficult for riders to find accurate information or to take full advantage of the riding available in the Ouachita NF.

The purpose of the Ouachita Project is to consolidate all available information about adventure, dual sport and off-road riding in the Ouachita NF and to provide the riding community a single source of up-to-date, accurate riding information.

I invite and encourage everyone with information about riding in the Ouachita NF to contribute to the Ouachita Project.  If you know some good paved or non-paved roads to ride, some fun single track to explore, have some GPS tracks from a trip you made to the Ouachita NF, know a good place to eat, camp, or sleep, etc. please feel free to let me know.  You can email me at rgibbens@austin.rr.com or you can post the information in The Ouachita Project thread in the dual sport forum section at Two Wheeled Texans or the central forums at ADVRider.  I will consolidate the information and post it here or make it available to the riding community.

Overview 

The Ouachita NF provides riding opportunities for street only, dual sport, and off-road motorcycles.  While street legal bikes can ride any public road or open FS road in the national forest, the National Forest Service has set aside several areas for off-road riding, using the designation OHV trail (off highway vehicle trail) to indicate these areas.  Non-street legal motorcycles (and ATVs) can legally ride only in designated OHV areas and on designated paths / trails. 

Off-Road

The following multi-use areas are can be ridden legally on non-street legal motorcycles: 

Forest Service & County Roads

In addition to its extensive off-road trail system, the Ouachita NF contains an abundance of non-paved roads.  Many of these roads are forest service (FS) roads maintained to varying levels by the National Forest Service.  Others are old logging roads, jeep trails, etc. that are not maintained or have been abandoned.  Finally, the Ouachita NF also contains a large number of non-paved country roads. 

Difficulty of these dual sport roads ranges from class 1 to class 4 (Motorcycle Non-Paved Road Rating System).

Scenic Paved Roads

The Ouachita NF has two designated scenic byways – Arkansas Scenic Highway 7 and the Talimena Scenic Byway.