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William B. Bankhead National Forest in NW Alabama.

Our tax dollars at work. :) Does the State do all the maintenance work? Here in Ohio, horse clubs lobby for more trails, and do a lot of the up keep, once built.

The forests are so beautiful, even at this time of year. It was in the high 20's, yesterday, with a few inches of snow. I had to get out with the dogs for a walk in the woods. Never thought to take some pictures. Dogs were sure glad to go for a run.

No, it's managed by the US Forest Service. I'd like to say nice things about them, but I can't, at least not the ones down here. They are very anti-horse. Come to think of it, they are anti-everything except for clear cut logging and replacing everything with pines, which is why we've had such a pine beetle epidemic around here. Too little biodiversity. They go from one extreme to the other. In the "wilderness" areas, you can't even bring in a chain saw to help them clear a trail and they won't let you ride a horse except on "designated horse trails" because your horse might damage the environment. But in other areas they'll bring in a log skidder and clear cut everything in sight. They won't let you off the trail in those areas either. I guess they figure your horse is going to erode the ground more than a log skidder. Go figure!

We went to the wilderness area on Sunday to ride the trails over there but couldn't because there were at least 100 trees down on every trail out there, courtesy of pine beetles and Hurricane Ivan back in September. One trail had 800! There's no way those trails will ever open back up if they won't let volunteer trail groups bring some chainsaws in there to clear it. That's just too much work to expect people to do with hand saws.

Sorry about the tirade. It's just such a beautiful place and they won't let people enjoy it like it could be. They just make me crazy!