biker, Bartels added mountain bike trails. And he vividly remembers the day he came home to find his son and some friends in the woods wearing ski goggles and armed with BB guns. He soon swapped their arsenal for paintball weapons and opened a paintball course to the public.
The family added a lake, tree-top zip line canopy tours, arrow tag, Airsoft games, off-road rockclimbing tours, buggy rides, and an array of other adventure activities over the 25 years that followed.
“ Nashville draws all kinds of people from around the country who are looking for all kinds of things to do,” Bartels said.“ Some visitors want to shop, but not all. We became the adventure part of Brown County.”
Before they knew it, eXplore Brown County found itself hosting annual music festivals, mountain bike races, triathlons, motorcycle / dirt bike trials, medieval feasts complete with jousting, workshops on topics including how to ride and tune a bike, birthday parties, family reunions, and mild-to-adventurous team building events for church groups, businesses, sports teams, schools, fraternities, and sororities. Bartels can laugh now about the time eXplore
Brown County even unknowingly hosted the FBI. On the heels of the 1993 Waco, Texas, religious compound making headlines for allegedly stockpiling illegal weapons, Bartels said one of his then-teenage sons was working at the camp when two individuals arrived and began asking“ really interesting questions” about whether the camp hosted antigovernment groups, built illegal firearm silencers, and such over the course of about two hours. The next day, the undercover agents played paintball at the camp. Bartels remembers being on a phone call when the pair readied to leave— having found nothing suspicious happening at the park— and one of the agents handed him a business card listing his title: within the FBI.
“ I hung up the phone and asked him,‘ Were you checking us out?’ He said,‘ Yep.’ I asked,‘ Did we pass?’ He said,‘ Yep,” Bartels said.
Continued on 26 July / August 2024 • Our Brown County 25