Lake Sugar Tree Motorsports Park

Lake Sugar Tree Motorsports Park is living motocross history: more than 50 years of racing in a natural amphitheater valley wrapped around a lake in Axton, Virginia, and widely considered the first motocross facility built east of the Mississippi. Cut into the hills in the early 1970s, it made its name hosting the legendary Trans-Am Series, Europe's best against America's best, where Brad Lackey won the first big race here in August 1975. It went on to host the 1977 AMA Amateur Championship (before that event moved to Loretta Lynn's) and 500cc Pro Nationals from 1986 to 1991, with hometown hero David Bailey putting on a clinic during the track's 1986 national comeback.

Gary Bailey ran his famous motocross schools here for decades, and the place still operates as the LST Training Complex, trackside gyms and all. The main track is national-caliber, a 1.25 to 1.7-mile outdoor layout on wide, loamy, sawdust-blended soil that uses the rolling hillsides for huge elevation, sweeping corners, tabletops, and deep ruts. A separate stadium-style supercross track, built in 2005 and fully lit, hosts the popular Moonlight Series Saturday-night races, and there is a dedicated pee-wee track plus more than 10 miles of woods trails for cross-country work.

A few things to know before you go: open practice weekends are dirt bikes only (quads and ATVs ride on designated event weekends), and you buy a daily or annual membership at the gate. The infrastructure is legit too, the Millennium Building has hot showers, a restaurant-style concession, and real restrooms, plus a bike wash and premium RV parking with electrical hookups and a dump station.