Sharing the fun with other offroad enthusiasts

R U S S E L L V I L L E — When Jason Parker returned to Franklin County several years ago, he had dreams of purchasing his childhood home on County Road 99, nestled in a hilly forested area about 15 miles from downtown Russellville.

While he didn’t obtain the original property he grew up on, Parker slowly began buying parcels of neighboring land. At the time, he, his wife and their three children were living in a house about five miles away, but he had his sights set on the mountain that once loomed over his backyard.

“I knew I wanted a place on that mountain,” Parker recalled. “I started tracking down the people who owned it, and when I bought it, I realized it was landlocked. There was no way to get to it from the road. No way whatsoever, so I went to all my neighbors to try and buy this and buy that.”

It took quite a bit of patience and persistence, but Parker soon came into a lot of land just adjacent to his childhood home. A year or so after moving his family into their new house at the base of his mountain, Parker began reaching for a new dream — opening an offroad park for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), which he would eventually call Northwest Alabama Mountain Ride.

“At first, this wasn’t for the public. It was solely a place for me and my family where we could get away from the world,” Parker admits, recalling the earliest days of planning the park.

“I’ve always played in the dirt,” he added with a laugh. “I don’t know how old I was when I got my first four-wheeler, but I’ve always enjoyed riding, and then I got into bulldozing and making trails. Like five years ago, I started cleaning this property up — you know, turning it into a good place for family to play and ride — and then two years ago, I decided to open the gates to the public.”

Long before he opened his park, Parker had already discovered an affinity for entrepreneurship.

As young as seven years old, Parker can remember helping his grandparents out with simple jobs at their former business, Parker’s Discount. That venture would lead to other opportunities with his late father, Phillip Parker, who encouraged each of his sons to forge their own livelihoods from their experiences in the family business.

“As I came up, working with Daddy, I just paid attention,” Parker said. “I’d watch him and how he could take one and make two. I learned and realized what to do through him. He was a good one. I know most daddies are, but he made sure that us boys knew the business before he died. He said the only thing he wanted was to know that we could take care of ourselves.”

At the age of 24, Parker was developing plans to start his own venture, and with encouragement and advice from his father, he decided to leave his hometown for the first time.

“Daddy told me, you’ve got to have at least 8,000 square feet, and you don’t want to pay more than $2,000 a month. I had all that in mind, and I knew I wanted to be on a major four-lane highway,” Parker said. “He said I should take off to Mississippi, and he told me, ‘Don’t even start looking until you’re three hours away.’” Parker found exactly what he was looking for just off the interstate between Meridian and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. That building became Parker’s Wholesale, a thriving discount store that Parker still owns today — though he admits he leaves day-to-day operations to his management team and doesn’t visit often.

“I just got burned out,” he said. “After 15 years, I guess, I moved back here. I choose now to stay out of the store.”

While his work at the offroad park is still very labor intensive, Parker said he prefers being outdoors, where he’s continually learning about his craft and envisioning expansions for his park.

He had already gotten a jump on developing the main route, which stretches six miles one way, meandering up and down the mountain and through the park, when he began connecting existing forestry routes on his property that had been developed at a time when the area was used for timber harvesting.

As he began cutting fresh trails through the untouched landscape, Parker realized he’d need help from someone with more experience. That’s where his new friend, Ed Bendall, comes in.

“When I talked about developing this into a park, a few people mentioned Ed,” Parker recalled. He contacted Bendall for the first time about two years ago.

“I had a four-door Ranger, and we got in that and rode through the whole place,” Parker said. “We spotted routes that would be quality enough to open to the public, and Ed liked what he saw. We had a lot of work to do to open a lot of this up, and any of those good, fun, extreme side trails, Ed has cut those.”

Though Bendall wasn’t in the business, he had years of experience cutting trails for himself and other offroad enthusiasts — trails that were designed for thrill-seeking excursions on his four-wheeler or in his Jeep.

With help from Bendall, Northwest Alabama Mountain Ride has 41 trails officially named, though Parker estimates that the actual trail count is closer to 80. A majority of those trails, he adds, were cut by Bendall with a chainsaw or a machete.

“We try to name them as we go,” Bendall said. “There’s one hillside where all the trails are named after Jeeps. We’ve got Rubicon, Cherokee, CJ7 and CJ6.”

Then there’s the trail that Bendall is perhaps most proud of called Baby Steps, which is something of a misnomer. Despite its name, the trail isn’t for beginners.

“I’ve had a few people who’ve tried Baby Steps come up to me cussing,” Bendall said with a laugh. “It’s pretty tough. When it’s slick and muddy, it’s near impossible, but if you come on a dry weekend and you climb Baby Steps, you’ve got a good Jeep or a good buggy. We’ve got another one beside it called Too Easy. It’s not as bad, but it’s still pretty tough.”

For less extreme explorers, Bendall and Parker said the park features plenty of smoother rides and scenic routes. In fact, before Parker met Bendall, he didn’t consider himself an extreme offroad driver, and he’d had little to no experience when it came to rockclimbing in a Jeep.

“I’d always spent my money on buying land. I never really bought any toys,” he said. “I did have a (Polaris) RZR and always thought that was real fun, but I had never had a Jeep. I followed Ed when we’d go out riding for a couple of weekends, and the level of exploration just went up. It was so much fun.”

Those adventures led to bigger plans for his park, which boasts trails and obstacle courses for Jeeps, all types and sizes of ATVs and sideby- sides, and even dirtbikes. As more and more riders came from around the state and across the country — Parker said the park has even hosted travelers from Canada — the growing need to provide a place for those visitors to stay became glaringly apparent.

While some visitors have taken advantage of Northwest Alabama Mountain Ride’s camping amenities, Parker said he continues to get requests for an RV park to be built on the site. It’s a request he hopes to oblige by the end of 2025.

“Even though we don’t have the RV hookups yet, you wouldn’t believe the number of campers we see on a ride day,” Parker said. “We see school buses pulling rigs come through here, and they’ll sleep in the bus. We’ve seen ambulances pulling rigs, and some will tie a hammock up in a tree or put up a tent. Once we finally do get the RV park, that’s going to be a whole new deal. There are a lot of people who don’t come out because I don’t have RV hookups yet.”

With the new project underway and daily trail maintenance, Parker said the greatest challenge he faces in operating the park is “keeping his equipment moving.”

“Rocks are tough on equipment. There’s always something breaking,” he said. “I can’t think of another true hurdle other than that, and that’s an everyday hurdle. I’ve got bulldozers and track hoes that are on their final drives. We just tore them up working out here.”

Despite those difficult setbacks, Parker said he doesn’t regret opening the park. When asked what drives him to continue expanding and growing the venue, he answered candidly.

“I don’t know what drives me. I don’t even know if this can become profitable as long as we’re running all this equipment, but it’s just fun,” he said. “You can ride up here, and you’ll pass people who are just smiling and as happy as they can be. I’ve seen that, and I’ve just been hooked. It’s seeing the fun and having the fun.”