Valley Ventures Mapping LLC is a (very) small Michigan based company owned by Jeramey Valley.

I formed VVMapping in 2007 to provide accurate and detailed maps for the recreational pursuits that I personally enjoy - mainly Off-Road Vehicles and Snowmobiling. I'm an avid Dual Sporter (street licensed dirt bike) and put thousands of miles of seat time in each year. The traversing of remote two track forest roads, ORV trails and snowmobile trails is a pure joy, whether it's on a motorcycle, ATV, truck or sled. My family and I enjoy camping and sharing in all of these activities.

When I started putting Dual Sport routes together I was dismayed at the options for maps. There were no copyright free maps that I could easily put my routes on and make copies for friends and event participants. Not only that, but there were no maps out there that had accurate information on just where the trails were. Sure, there were maps available, but they either didn't have the detail, didn't have enough coverage and almost always did not show where the trail was with much accuracy.

Our Dual Sport routes needed to know where the trail crossed or shared a road, so we'd know where we could join a trail or avoid two-way traffic. None of the maps helped us with that respect. This lead to me making my own map-base and maps from scratch. Most of the map base was devised from TIGER data or the State's version of the same (public data, by the way). Once the map base was out of the way, I could start integrating GPS data into it to show the courses we were using as well as the ORV and snowmobile trails. Most all of these trails are not shown on any map, let alone in any combination of roads/towns/forest roads/trails/rivers.

Some of the folks in the CCC noted all of the maps I was churning out for various events and other things. They saw the opportunity to update their map book of ORV trails with GPS recorded data. Since I was already an active member of that organization, it made sense to apply my tools and data set to their needs. At the time we started I didn't have tracks for many of the ORV trail systems, but used their map book as my excuse to get out there and ride. The CCC was able to help fill in some of the gaps with donated trail data from a few different sources. Some of that was great and some was not so hot. Since the time of that first publishing, I have been able to acquire my own tracks for those trail system - it's good to be out riding!

I do enjoy making the maps, especially the data recording portion. I would like to give all of the products away, but the cost to produce them is not that low. I'll strive to offer as much "free" stuff on here as I can and offer for sale the value added products that I hope many people find worth the price.

I really like having the paper map in my hand match the background map on my GPS. Not match as in showing the same State or county, but match as in showing the exact same roads, road names, water features and trails. I know first hand how difficult it is trying to interpret one map to another and not seeing the same roads between the two. This is why I build both paper and GPS maps.

We are proud to sponsor/support the following:

• Michigan Snowmobile Association
• Great Lakes Dual Sporters
• ATV OffRoad Club of Michigan
• Association of Wisconsin Snowmobile Clubs
• Great Lakes Four Wheel Drive Association

I'm always interested in hearing from you on how to improve things here. Feel free to drop me a note.