Note: The date and time stamp on this article have been updated from its original post Jan. 8 2009. A photo and other elements were added.
GENESEE TOWNSHIP, Michigan -- Off-road enthusiasts will have something more to roar about this year at the Mounds ORV Park.
Genesee County parks officials got the word over the holiday break that the state Department of Natural Resources is giving them $100,000 to build the next bigger, badder and better phase of the Mounds Rock Crawl.
A DNR grant last year built Phase One, a three-quarter-acre rock course designed to be handled by most stock off-road vehicles, with rocks 12 inches in diameter or less.
The new Phase Two will cover about 1.5 acres with a rolling log jam trail, a staircase feature and a rock crawl with boulders 30 inches or more in diameter.
"It's not so much the size of the course. It's the challenge. And this is going to have you going over things you just shouldn't be going over," joked parks Deputy Director Ron Walker.One of those revving his engines in anticipation is Bob DeVore of Swartz Creek, a longtime Hummer enthusiast and self-described "retired jarhead" whose pewter H2, complete with replica 50-caliber machine gun turrets mounted on the hood, is a familiar sight at the Mounds.
"I just love the challenge. It's man and machine versus Mother Nature," said DeVore, who helped supply the original course concepts used in the Rowe Inc. engineering design for the three-phase, 10-acre area. "This is not a fast-paced sport. It's very slow, tedious work with a spotter. You pick your line and work your way through very methodically. It could take a half-hour to get 100 feet, depending just how well the rocks are placed."
The Mounds is the only public ORV facility with a rock crawl in the Lower Peninsula, said Walker, and regularly draws off-roaders from as far away as Ohio and Indiana.
"A lot of people stopped going to the Mounds because it would turn into just a lot of mud, which is fun too, but this is opening up the horizons to even more people coming to play because it's a different avenue, a different approach to off-highway fun," said DeVore. "Since they opened the first phase, there's not a weekend there's not somebody out there on the rocks. It's been very well-received."
In fact, DeVore first caught the off-road bug at the annual Hummer Happening hosted at the Mounds by Al Serra Auto Plaza's Hummer division.
"That's what had me embrace this whole concept of off-highway usage," said DeVore.
Walker said they hope to get started on the project in the late spring but transporting the heavy boulders will have to wait until after the frost advisories are lifted from the roads.
"Depending on the weather, it could be finished by late summer, early fall," said Walker.
And after that? DeVore is already rubbing his hands together in anticipation for Phase 3.
"My truck can do levels one and two, no problem. But if they build it to a tee, when we get to the Level 3 Extreme, I couldn't do it without assistance. I'll need a winch to scramble up and over. I can't wait."