Originally Posted by
PeteHski
All these lovely gravel road pictures have got me thinking. The only attraction there to me is the scenery and lack of traffic (don't get me wrong, those are MASSIVE attractions!). But not the gravel roads themselves - they look nothing special to ride on (just reminds me of boring fire-roads between singletrack segments). I would much prefer to ride on smooth tarmac roads in the same settings or on interesting mtb singletrack. So it's just a matter of what is actually available where you happen to live and ride. I just ride bikes based on that.
I personally don’t get the appeal of gravel for gravel’s sake. I am largely indifferent to paved vs unpaved.
However, gravel/dirt correlates highly with the routes I want to ride on: roads with little vehicular traffic. So I ride a lot of gravel/dirt roads.
If someone wanted to close them off to cars and pave them, I’d be OK with that.
Mountain biking is different for me. There the technical challenge of the trail is half the reason I do it.