WV Motorsports & Adventure Travel Day 2025

There’s a particular musical number from the hit Broadway show Hamilton that always makes me chuckle. It’s when Aaron Burr laments he wishes he could, “be in the room where it happens.” In that moment he was on the outside looking in as Alexander Hamilton secured his position as Treasurer and negotiated for the nation’s capitol to end up on shared land from both Maryland and Virginia. Later when Hamilton is challenged on this deal he says, rather curtly, “I wanted what I got; and I got what I wanted.” Now, what does that have to do with anything overland adventure travel related? Well, I found myself in my own “room where it happened” moment this past weekend at the West Virginia State Capitol Building.

For the last few years the West Virginia Motorsports & Adventure Travel Day has been a rally bringing together a mix of motorsport enthusiasts to the lawmakers of the West Virginia Legislature. This is to showcase not only West Virginia based businesses, but also advocate for support for motorsports based tourism in West Virginia. This not only includes typical motorsports like racing and motorcycles, but also off-road tourism like full-size 4×4’s, side-by-sides, ATV’s, and of course overland adventure travel.

While my recent involvement with things in West Virginia center around events like WV Tread Lightly! Day (2023 & 2024), the Mountain State Overland event Adventure X Fest (first 3 years in VA, but 2023 & 2024 were in WV), and associated Tread Lightly! projects, my roots in WV go back to my teenage years. I first visited West Virginia as part of a summer camp trip where we went rock climbing on Seneca Rocks and spelunking in nearby caves. It was a great trip. A few years later I was working at that camp and was selected to go back to WV as a guide. Many years later I featured multiple WV locations in my 2015 No Highways Tour Book. Coming in to the state at the northern tip I snaked my way from the Davis/Elkins area down to the radio telescopes of the Green Bank Observatory and the iconic Cass Scenic Railroad. From there I bounced into VA — but you know that story (if not, buy the book here). In between that initial trip to WV when I was a teenager to my most recent trip this past weekend I have been to WV countless occasions. It really is the jewel of the east coast and our last remaining frontier.

I left PA early on Thursday morning with the goal of being in Charleston, WV by dinner time. There was supposed to be a brief meet-n-greet at the hotel while people got checked in. You know me, I’m not going to hotel it if I don’t have to. Since the girlfriend’s van was back up and running I opted to take it and camp out all weekend. Luckily enough the owners of a local off-road park, Appalachian Outlaw Trails, were kind enough to let a few of us camp up on their property. I had camped there once before back in 2022 part of a trip hosted by Jerry Bain of the Country Roads Coalition. This time not only was Jerry up there but so was Jason from Mountain State Overland. After a few hours around the campfire — and more than a few beers — it was time to call it a night.

The next morning I hit up the local YMCA for a quick shower before heading to the capitol building. I also made an obligatory stop at Tudor’s Biscuit World (my first of three). Once at the capitol we set up inside the rotunda and spent the day talking to legislators from around the state. It was nice, as someone from out-of-state, talking to them and letting them know their efforts to promote tourism were in fact working. I can only hope to gather up some more people from out-of-state to show up next year. That evening was a social happy-hour back at the hotel. After sharing some drinks and funny stories it was back to the mountain to camp.

Saturday, after a quick stop at Tudor’s, it was back to the capitol complex for an outdoor car show on the grounds behind the State Capitol Building. This was a good time to interact with the general public as well as continue networking with other people part of the rally. That evening it was back up to the mountain this time with a lot more people. The guys at Appalachian Outlaw Trails hosted tours of their property, had a cookout, music, bon-fire, and of course all the social libations one could want. I think I made it till about 1am before I needed to tuck in for the night.

Sunday started off slow with most of us still lingering on the mountain till mid-morning. Jason from MSO and my buddy Scott from GoFoxAdventures made one last stop at Tudor’s before heading our separate ways home. The drive home sucked because it pretty much rained the entire time.

Now that I’m home and looking back at the event I think there are two main takeaways for me. First, if you “want to be in the room where it happens” you first have to show up. Right now is a very tumultuous time when it comes to public land use. Regardless of your political affiliation, we can all agree that closure and sale of public lands is not in anyone’s best interest. These state and national forests are a commodity, yes, but they are one better left managed by state and federal agencies rater than private corporations. Just look at how things used to be. Timber companies moved west like a plague of locusts cutting down everything they could get their saws to. In their wake was a barren landscape devoid of any and all flora and fauna. So yes, we do in fact need the Forest Service and their rangers. Second, if you “want to be in the room where it happens” you also need to step up. So many people are content with the status quo without realizing that there is no slack-water here. Things are either flowing forward or flowing backward. If we, collectively as a community of off-road and outdoor enthusiasts, are not stepping up to do more than the status quo then the current trend of sliding backwards is going to continue. We are going to continue losing access to public lands, roads, and campsites.

A good example of how showing up and stepping up can help is the Tread Lightly! project we did in conjunction with Adventure X Fest two years ago. Not only did we clean up a bunch of campsites and a few miles of roads, but we actually got the USFS to add additional campsites they were originally going to shut down. These “renegade” sites were not approved so they were going to clean them up, break apart the fire rings, and then block access to the sites. However, through the efforts of our group they opted to leave the sites intact after we cleaned this up. This usually doesn’t happen. It takes a group of dedicated hardworking people showing up and stepping up for things like this to happen. We just need MORE. More people. More projects. More time spent giving back rather than just taking our public lands for granted.

Huge thanks to Jedediah Smith of Backroads of Appalachia for running point on the day’s activities. Also huge thanks to Eric Larch of Appalachian Outlaw Trails for hosting those of us that camped as well as the open house on the AOT property Saturday afternoon.

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