Spring cleaning, yard work and house projects begin to clutter our minds as the outdoor season approaches.

However, early spring is also the perfect time to schedule an adventure before the masses fill up the parks and trails. That’s exactly what we did this year for our Easter weekend.

As the week before Easter approached, we started talking about making a little adventure out of our long weekend and travels to visit family. Thanks to the Internet, it’s easy to gather information and within an evening we had some solid plans to get some riding in, but also to have our first camping trip of the season.

If you’re not familiar with the areas to the east, there’s a great place called Raystown Lake in Hesston, known largely for its boating. It’s operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In addition to the boating, it’s also home to one of the best mountain bike trail systems in Pennsylvania called the Allegrippis Trails. Around 24 trails make up the stacked loop system and they dry out quickly following a rain, so they are always open.

This means you can always plan to ride and with the stacked loop you can make the route shorter or longer to fit your schedule or fitness. The trails are also rated “easiest, “moderate” and “most difficult” (blue, green & black) within the system and even the “most difficult” trails are ridable but will more than likely take the newer cyclist a bit longer to complete than a seasoned vet.

The Raystown area offers several choices for camping and we chose to stay at the Seven Points Camping area, which is first come first serve until the end of May and $30 a night for a site. This put us about a half-mile from a trail head so we wouldn’t need to drive from our site.

Good Friday arrived and we drove the 3.5 hours to set up camp and prepared for a sunny day in the woods. Taking along the necessities such as a pump, water bottles and some energy chews, we headed out early afternoon.

Connecting the campground to the stacked loop is a trail called “Stony,” with a moderate rating. It can be tricky in a few spots, but has a great flow over its relatively short 2.3 miles and it only climbs around 273 feet. This brings you to another trailhead on Baker’s Hollow Road. Of course, you could skip this trail and drive over if you wish.

A large map depicts the trails at the start and you can easily see the stacked loops and how the inner shorter loops are all rated “easiest.” If you’re a technology geek, then download a trail app before heading out. We have successfully used Trailforks on our smart phones which allow you to download regions and use those maps even when offline.

The app will provide distances climbing and descending for each trail. Don’t worry if you want to wing it — there are several detailed all weather maps posted along the trail and the trails themselves are well posted with their names.

We rode most of the outer loop and doubled back a time or two to shred a super fun section twice. We finished out our 36-mile ride by once again riding Stony to return to camp.

Facilities at the campground were clean and with only half of the sites occupied, there was plenty of hot water in the bathhouse. Once we cleaned up, we got the fire started and roasted hot dogs while cleaning and checking over our equipment from the day’s miles.

We concluded our day with a quiet evening snacking around the fire and talking about the day behind us before retiring to the tent.

Saturday, we got up with the sun, had coffee and oatmeal before once again hitting the trails! A slightly shorter loop of 30 miles of the same trails before we packed up and left to visit family in the area. Easter Sunday was bacon and eggs with family and once again off for another riding location.

On our return to Butler, we stopped at Yellow Creek State Park right along 422 outside of Indiana. This is a state park and the mountain bike trails here are fantastic — not so fast and flowy like Allegrippis, but more tight single-track woven through the woods just around the perimeter of the lake itself, fast fun and slightly technical in some places.

They make us smile and hurt in a few places when the short steep climbs come further out the trail. Trail markings are good, but you cannot complete a loop around the lake so it’s more of an out and back ride. Keep track of your time or distance so you don’t overdo it.

We need to remember it doesn’t require a lot of pre-planning to create an adventure. Our simple weekend involved taking water, coffee, hot dogs, oatmeal and some fire side snacks. Throw in some camping gear, bikes, a box of firewood and you have yourself an adventure.

For more information about some of these areas and their history, go online and search Allegrippis Trails and Yellow Creek State Park. Or check out our webpage www.travissaeler.com for videos & photos and information about some of the apps and gear we use.

Travis and Julie Saeler are cycling columnists for the Butler Eagle.