Best Cities for Easy Access to Tracks or Trails

KS, OK, MO

In KS you have Bar2Bar (awesome sand track), jeeps, sand track in manhattan, school creek orv at Milford for single track and hill climbs and a hare scramble every year, sand trails down near great bend.  In OK there is Ponca, Jandebeurs and others, + little Sahara sand dunes.  In MO you have adrenaline, grain valley, kingsville, section 8 and roc solid are smaller practice type tracks.  Drive up to Lincoln NE there’s a track there as well.

Colorado is also 6.5 hours for a small vacation to thunder valley.

Yep, prep at sac area tracks blows away the prep at most socal tracks.  Lots open at least one weekday as well.  

Hendersonville NC/Greenville SC

221 MX, Catheys Creek MX, The Cut, Strawberry Hill, Revolution MX, Next LVL 101, Travelers Rest MX, My Backyard Track, Hannah Creek , Top Gun MX- All of these 30-90Mins away.

From Hendersonville you can drive I-26 for 90 mins to Johnson City, TN and ride Muddy Creek MX too. 

Trails-Enoree and Brown Mtn just down the road a short way. Weyehutta in Sylva has great trails too. 

If you ride MTB, pisgah forest , Dupont , Ride Kanuga and Ride Rock Creek are all huge. Actually i feel this is the main hub for MTB in the Southeast. 

Curious, what's the difference between Socal prep and Norcal? I've never been up there. Seems like scene there is holding up well which is good to see. I thought the track prep down here was as good as it gets. 

And another for Grand Junction. Riding is titties there

1st let me say thank you for being a traveling nurse. That is a very challenging job.

For mountain biking the Charlotte US Whitewater training center has a good mountain bike area plus Rock Hill outdoor center has a mountain bike are plus an amazing BMX stadium. 

https://www.sctrails.net/trails/trail/rock-hill-outdoor-center-mountain…

Some of these have already been mentioned but Sacramento area / Auburn for sure, Grand Junction / Moab region, depending on track vs trail preference Portland might not be a bad option with Tillamook having endless singletrack plus easy trips to eastern Oregon for more riding. I am not familiar with the east coast but know North Carolina has a vibrant moto scene and a ton of MTB too

Believe it or not, but living in the greater Chicagoland area has good access to MX tracks if you're willing to drive 45 mins - 2 hours. If you can brave the long winters and politics (sorry), you'll appreciate the job market of a major metro, good food, and, IMO, some of the best dirt in the country to ride/race on.

Illinois - Joliet MX, Byron Motorsports Park, Sunset Ridge MX, Mt Carroll MX, Muddy Waters MX, all within 2 hours and in state. Further drive south you have Lincoln Trail MX. Indoor Tracks too called Megatrax and B-52 (I think???)

NW Indiana - Leisure Time MX, Motoland (both are badass sand tracks)

SW Michigan - RedBudddd

All that being said, I moved away and likely won't move back for a couple reasons BUT with family still in the area I'll be making trips back to visit and definitely bringing a bike with me each time!

The Denver Metro area does have a few tracks within an hour that I frequent: Thunder Valley and IMI Motorsports. However, I am spoiled with growing up in the soft fertile loam of Midwestern tracks. If you're from California, you'll gel with the CO tracks no problem.

Just my 2... more like 4 cents!

My 2 cents Aspen or Crested Butte for trail riding... Tracks are a little few and far between unless you know they guys with private tracks. 

Those are both places with essentially a 3 month riding season

We have 6 months of high country single track in both spots. Obviously some years are longer riding season with a shit snow pack and some years we are not getting over Star pass until Mid July with a big snow year. I have lived here for 18 years riding single track in the area and CB. 

Michigan is legit!  

Agree on bumping it up to 2 hours and there is a lot plus way more mtb and unreal trails.  

Underrated state perhaps.

Don’t worry about winter, make some trips south because road trips for biking is awesome.

I have enjoyed following this forum. I live in Minnesota, about an hour or so north of the Twin Cities. As much as I do not like the high taxes and a longer winter there is  a good amount of moto tracks and MTB trails to pick from. I have considered moving because of some of these drawbacks but have not pulled the plug. 

For moto I have BCMX, Berm Benders, Motocity, Kingston, Little Falls, Gransturg, Staples, BP73 Moto Ranch all either within an hour to a little over an hour from me. There is also Spring Creek, Meadow Valley and Brookston that are about two hours from me. Within about thirty min me there are about 8 or so private tracks that I go ride at.  In the winter I ride indoors at Cedar Lake Speedway which is about an hour and a half from me and also travel down south usually to Texas, Carolina's and Florida.  

MTB there are trails everywhere, Elk River, Maple Grove, Milaca, Cambridge, Monticello, all within 45 minutes from me along with some awesome places that are 1-3 hours (Cuyuna, Duluth, Tioga, Murphy, Lebabnon Hills).  

I’m interested in a cool town with good riding in the summer and a good mountain for the winter. That’s hard for me to find. 

Philly would be good choice for the Northeast imo, but there is definitely better places in the country. You would need a secure garage for obvious reasons.

For MX tracks you have NJ Field of Dreams, Englishtown, Dutchman's, Pagoda MX, Budd's Creek, Hurricane Hills, Rocket Raceway, Happy Ramblers, Sleepy Hollow, The Landing MX, Breezewood in the area (~3 hours or less) plus quite a few private practice tracks around.

For offroad there is ECEA enduros and harescrambles, D6 XC, and TORR GPs pretty much every weekend year-round, plus a few other series with some races that aren't too far like SXCS and NYOA. There is FRO for rocky PA offroad riding, and countless areas in the pine barrens and across PA for endless (outlaw) trail riding.

Being along the intersection of major highways gives you great access to long weekend trips anywhere on the east coast. Also a lot of cycling options in the area.

SLC, but the moto was pretty much shut down due to high temps this summer.  Off-road is always abundant though. 

Utah is definitely on the short list. I wish all the mountain towns hadn’t gotten so expensive in the last few years. 

This Guy! Let's Goo! haha I remember reading in Outside a while back, that Grand Rapids has more Trail Distance (MTB / Cycling) than anywhere else in the Country. That's not even counting the Snowmobile Trail network! That's a whole other world haha Definitely wish we were able to take advantage of that more (in the Winter), Northern Michigan is genuinely insane. 

To your point, pair that with Silver Lake (Sand Dunes), the range of new(er) tracks popping up all over plus the absolute mental "private" ones - Michigan in & of itself is a massive hidden gem. This place is truly what is described in a Tim Allen Pure Michigan ad haha

Can't think of anywhere barring parts of California, that within 1-2 Hours, you can: Surf (all year round), do Moto's, lay down a sick Road Bike ride, Ski / snowboard, wakeboard, karting (at an actual track), do an SCCA race, arguably the best track on the Planet (Red Bud) - I feel like an idiot not having explored half this stuff! Apparently! even on the Manitou Islands they are ORV mainly, which is so cool! All sandy, 2-tracks? sounds like a time! haha enough rambling from me now. 

What's wrong with Mammoth?  

Trail riding close to mammoth sucks in my experience and the mountain isn’t my favorite. I’m looking to buy a house outside of CA for vacation type stays. But I would love Tahoe if it wasnt so expensive. 

I don't trail ride so can't comment on that and when I lived in Mammoth the track was opened June 1st and the ski hill wasn't as crowded.  Had some of the best years of my life living there in the late 90's.  

Best answer for you is probably western Colorado.  You can ride a new trail every day for the rest of your life if you want to, desert or mountains.  And within 2 hours you have Aspen/Telluride/Crested Butte/Powderhorn, 3 hours to the i-70 resorts and about 4 hours to the Utah resorts.  I don't ski much anymore, sledskiing if I do and never did care for the Colorado resorts, but for what you want to do, there probably isn't a better place to be.  At least I haven't found one and I have spent a lifetime obsessed with moto and skiing, from one end of the Americas to the other.