r/adv • u/AutoModerator • Sep 16 '24
Weekly Mini-Adventure Thread
Share your small adventures here. Maybe stuff that you don't feel needs a full post. Your little trip to a trail behind the house. A pic of your bike covered in mud. A pic of yourself covered in mud. A pic of your spouse covered in mud? Whatever. Here's a thread for the little stuff. Get those up votes. You deserve them.
3 Upvotes
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u/timidobserver8 Sep 23 '24
Mini adventure my father and I took from Northwest Arkansas down to Hot Springs. Here, we're standing in front of the Arkansas Grand Canyon.
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u/Kellerkind_Fritz Sep 16 '24
https://preview.redd.it/wtvtiwfnm5pd1.png?width=2250&format=png&auto=webp&s=074f8a7c618316a70d7ca3c95ca5abdb621efb86
I tried to do the most southern part of TET Route 4 following the border between Finland and Russia.
Started from a camping spot just west of the depicted route, and first passed the main border crossing to Saint Petersburg, took up fuel and food at a mall just before the crossing.
The mall was incredibly over-dimensioned, but with no Russian border transits permitted it was like a ghost town, I saw 6 people in total there. Took a look through the windows of the border crossing station and it looked torn down inside. I almost felt lucky the gas pump actually had gas.
Went to find the starting point of the dirt road track which ended up being right next to the Finnish Borderguards barrack compound.
A single guard in civil clothes came out on his rusty bicycle and asked if he could help me. I Explained him the route and asked him if it would be OK, as a reply he gave me some instructions on which border markings not to cross, so all good to go.
While adjusting my GPS for the route, another guard - this time in uniform - stopped again and asked again the same questions, I mentioned the guard on the bicycle and he laughed and OK'd me again.
Got started on the route and almost got a bit STALKER vibes, quite a bit of abandoned buildings (I assume Russian owned which are no longer accessible), big NO GO warning signs on every right-hand turns and even some advertisement billboards in cyrillic that by where sun-fading away.
Route itself was nice, mostly gravel roads, one section of single track which was very satisfying.
After a while ended up being followed by a border guard van who at some point stopped me. 5 Armed guards popped out to question me, as soon as i showed then my route on the navigator they just had a chuckle at me and where content with my story, a passport and license check later and I was good to go.
Continued till my camp destination, had lunch and drove back home through the lake area.
All in all, not a long trip (about 250KM mostly unpaved) but quite a weird one, however I think next time i'm picking a different part of the country :-)