There are few things I enjoy more than a morning bike ride where I can explore.  I get bored with the same old, but love to ride and find new places, trails and adventures.

We recently went camping at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground.  We’ve gone before, but this is the first time I’ve brought my bike and I’m so happy I did!

I went on a few rides during our visit – but this one was my favorite.

Fort Wilderness Bike Ride

I started at our campsite and rode my bikes through the different loops around the campground just exploring the different areas and looking at how people set up their different campsites.  There are so many people who camp here for a long time! They bring decorations, their own golf carts and literally almost live here!  Now that’s the life!

For the most part, the ride was easy, just being sure to avoid the buses and RV’s packing up and leaving camp.  My favorite part came though about mile 4.5  Check out this map:

A great bike ride along trails between Disney’s Wilderness Lodge & Campground.

So the yellow star is where the trail officially starts.  It’s a paved trail that leads you from the campground over to Wilderness Lodge.  It looks like this:

The paved trail between Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness Campground.

The trail itself is roughly one-mile door-to-door if you stick to the paved trail.  It’s beautiful and shaded and a great small ride or walk.  The route is the one on the above map that starts at the Yellow Star and follows the red path – and there’s either a turnaround or you can head into the Wilderness Lodge.  You’ll see on the above map that there’s this RED X.

Well, it looked liked an off-roading trail to me – and I was up for adventure, so I turned to go into it.  As I started the trail, I noticed these pine-cones on the ground.

Was this a warning to avoid the trail?

Was that someone telling me NOT to go down this trail? I kind of felt like this made me want to go into it even more! And who spent the time writing this out? Either way, I went in….and not 5 feet into it ran into a huge spider web – which totally freaked me out.  As I was recovering from spider web-gate, a giant deer darted out of the bushes, nearly hitting my front tire and ran across the trail into another patch of trees/bushes.  It freaked me out so much that I just turned around.  Hence the red X.

So after I regrouped, I decided to explore the marked nature trail.  It didn’t say anything about bikes not being allowed – so I explored.  And it was awesome.  I did not see another person the entire trail.  On the map above, the nature trail is marked with a yellow line along the red line of my GPS tracker.

This sign is at the end of the nature trail to the paved trail. Pick where you want to go.

This trail was unpaved and made up of sandy rock.  It was easy to bike on and mostly shaded.

The Disney nature trail.

It also provided some great views as you biked along the water.

Sweaty selfie along the Disney nature trail. Check out Disney’s Contemporary Resort in the background.

There was one point of the trail where a “cast member only” sign was posted (marked with an orange line on the above map.)  I just kept going along the trail.  It wasn’t all that exciting and dead-ended at what looked like a cast member laundry facility with a bunch of guys folding towels or something.  I just turned back and went along my way.

Not a hard ride, not a long ride, but a great one! Can’t wait to go back and do more exploring.  Maybe next time I’ll have the guts to see what’s down that one unmarked trail.  I just don’t want to end up in Disney jail!

Also – this is my favorite sign and I want it for my house!  I’ve long been opposed to RunDisney and I don’t run.  But that’s fine.  I just don’t understand why they can’t do a BikeDisney and start some events out there.  I would love to bike along all those nicely paved Disney roads and through the parks.

Disney Bike Crossing sign