Quote Originally Posted by north woods gal View Post
Yup, there is gravel and there is gravel. Makes a huge difference as to the size of the particles, how much gravel is on the surface and what the surface underneath is. Some of our dedicated "unpaved" bike trails with very fine gravel and hard under-surfaces are actually very easy to do with a standard road bike. On the other hand, our true gravel backroads designed for vehicle traffic are often MTB, only, and even then, the MTB makes a difference. Since our woods are basically built on a huge pile of sand, some of our backroads that are not graveled over are fat bike country, only. The deep sand just swallows anything else. In fact, a lot of us, up here, use fat bikes for all of our MTB riding. We use fat bikes all year long.
That makes sense to me after some of the gravel roads and trails we've encountered lately. Some were hairy even for MTBs with the deep pockets of gravel and/or sand. Would LOVE to have a fattie too, but three bikes apiece is all we can manage since we're traveling full-time in our motorhome. :-)