WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Places That are Overrated for a Reason?

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week they chat about some locations that they believe to be overrated for a reason, or as Storm prefers to say, "underrated." 

Listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, welcome to Off the Trails. Hi-ho, I'm Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Seguirot, and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. This week, we'll be chatting about some places that sound really overrated, but actually live up to the hype in our minds. So, underrated places. This is what you were trying to say earlier, but I. vehemently disagree. I'm talking about places that people talk about them and you're like, there's no way it's that cool. And then you go there and you're like, actually, I get it.

This is what people will talk about when they meet me. Because everyone's like, he's pretty cool. And they're like, no, he's not. And then they meet me and they fall in love with me. That's true. Swarm is a very, very cool and genuinely kind person. Wow. I wasn't actually expecting a compliment out of that. Well, hey, I'm serious. Like, after meeting you freshman, I was like, wow, storm is one of the nicest people around. I'm a little bit off the trails. It's hard to find me. Oh, my gosh.

Anyway. Underrated places. Well, no. Trail markers. Slightly over, places that are not overrated. That was a really bad description. Since I'm announcing it, you have to go first. Okay.

My trail marker was going for a bike ride this week. I may have mentioned a week ago or a couple weeks ago on the podcast. that I'm training for a marathon, that is no longer the case. Because you're a peddler now. I have stress fractures in both of my tibia bones. And if I keep doing activity that involves impact, I could break my bones. Don't get stressed, kids. So actually, that does play a role into it.

And I think it was homecoming, legitimately. Homecoming plus mock rock. I was averaging like 18,000 steps a day for three weeks, which is a lot of, a lot of pressure on the bones. So because of that, I, I biked once this week, which now after doing further research, I know I'm not supposed to do any activity for like the first two weeks because I'm purely supposed to rest. And then like after three weeks, I can start getting back into biking and whatnot. So it messes up your whole training, right? It messes up everything. And so because of that, I've just decided not to do the marathon because it's in 11 weeks. And so if I can't train for eight weeks,

then three weeks is not enough to like get back up to speed like I could theoretically do it but in the process of doing the marathon I would most likely re-injure myself yeah so not worth it um so I'm not doing it sometimes you should stay on the trail so sometimes yeah I guess so but anyway I went for a beautiful bike ride it was my last outdoor activity for probably the next couple of weeks and it was just the most sunshiney beautiful autumn day the leaves were falling literally like I would was biking under trees and leaves were falling in my face and it was wonderful. It's the best season. Yeah. We've already talked about this, but it is the best season. Yeah. No, it was so great.

So yeah, that's my trail marker going on a bike ride. My trail marker is that last night I got blasted in the face by a sprinkler. I was walking outside. It was like pretty late at night. And then all the sprinklers came up and blasted me in the face. Wow. And I was on the sidewalk and I quickly was on the road. Storm, I don't normally believe in this, but I think that's karma for what you

doing. I don't know about that, but what I do know is that I got wet. Yeah. They were angled in such a way that they would have missed a short king. But I'm like Nate. Six foot eight. So I got sniped in the nostril. You are not six foot eight.

That's, yeah. You're like six, five. No, you're not. So I actually, it's a brief side note. I learned this. Apparently women don't know how height works. Hang on, hang on. You're like, you are six.

You are six three. Because you're slightly taller in Jones. Are you sure? Yeah, and he's 6.3. If he's, if he wasn't, if he wasn't, if he wasn't, if I'm taller than him, I'm 6.4. Okay, well, sorry. But I can't do math, apparently. But I learned that a lot of people, like, just lose count after like 5.10.

Really? Like, people that are shorter. Because you could. I feel like I have a decent understanding of height. Because you could, you could walk up to people, because I've done this before, I've walked to people and been like, yeah, I'm like, 511. And, like, people are like, and like, little. small people are like, yeah, okay.

And then people who are around six, they're like, no, no, because I. They get defensive. Yeah, they get defensive. Or, like, you could walk up and be like, six, six. And, like, anyone who's, like, five, four will be like, yeah, checks out.

But I'm five, six. So there's no way you're a foot taller than me. I am, like, a few inches shy of a foot taller. Yeah, but you're not actually a foot taller than me. I'm six three. Okay. You got it right. Six three and proud of it.

Good. Mm-hmm. six and proud of it. You're a dwarf. Okay. I'm actually above the height of an average American woman, but that's besides the point. Being, you know, being tall is overrated. Speaking of overrated, you're sorry.

Some things sound overrated, but aren't. But aren't. Which is just being underrated. Oh, my gosh. You have to go first. I have to go first. Okay, so my place is Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe, like the Chevrolet car.

Yes. So being from California, I have always heard people rave about Lake Tahoe and they're like, the water's so blue. It's so beautiful. So blue. So beautiful. And I was just like, it's a lake. It can't be that cool because a lot of people in city like locations will do this about a place. They'll be like, it's the most spectacular mountain I've ever seen and the mountain is just like lame. And so I thought all these Californians are talking about Lake Tahoe. People in Scotland freak out about lakes. It's a pretty big deal.

Yeah. People in Michigan are like, whoa, lakes. But it's like you your lakes aren't lakes, bro. The Great Lakes aren't lakes. I don't care. They're nominally incorrect. Okay. We're not going to get into that.

It's a whole other thing. Anyway, but a lot of people are like, and the mountains around it are beautiful and the water is just great to go swimming in and paddleboarding. And me hearing all these things for many, many years of my life in seeing stickers on people's cars that say keep Lake Tahoe blue that's a thing in California I was like there's opposed to what like they don't want to get included yeah yeah and it's very crystal clear blue and I'll get into that but just being in a culture like this and hearing about all of this I was like there is no way this lake is that gorgeous impressive this is

just a bunch of city people being amazed by water and it's I was like because it's so talked about so much it must be a really touristy place and like I don't particularly enjoy touristy places I try to avoid them and go where less people are and so after hearing all this stuff when you prefer European cars to American made ones storm here this is not funny you're laughing and so is the audience I laugh at everything so you decided finally decided to go well my my family kind of decided and I I went in with low expectations Because it's like this place is hyped up. It cannot be this cool. And I saw the water and my world was changed. Really? It is so incredibly beautiful. We're talking like blue food dye? Are we talking like? We're talking blue food die in a sense when the sunlight hits the water at a certain angle. So early- Little sparkles run across it. Early morning and like late afternoon. When the sun is at an angle, it just it's so close. there you can see all the way down. There is nothing growing in this water. It's completely sandy on the

bottom so you don't have like gross lake weed. There's all these rocks in it. And the rocks will stick out of the water so you can go climb on top of the rocks and jump in the beautiful blue water. I like climbing on rocks. Yeah. And I'm and I'm someone who even though I'm a very comfortable swimmer and I've always grown up in the water. I'm someone who gets scared by like murky lakes. I don't know what's below me. I swim out so far into the. Just like, because I could see down. I could see all the way down. I was like, nothing is below me.

How like deep is it get? It gets really, really deep. I wish I knew the exact statistic, but I think it's like 900. I could be pulling that out of that way. 900 feet deep? Let me look it up. Seems a lot like a lot. I don't know what average lake depth is, so I don't really know why I asked the question.

It is, oh, it's approximately 1,000 feet deep. Wow. That seems pretty deep. It is the second deepest lake. North America. I'm pretty sure Crater Lake is the deepest, which also, have you been to Crater Lake? Nope. Where is that? Equally as blue water, it's in Oregon. So if you've been to Crater Lake, the water in Lake Tahoe is comparable, but the lake is so much bigger. And not only is the water just like as spectacular and clean and pure, but there's mountains all around it. And like,

not, okay, not Sierra Nevada mountains. I mean, it is part of the Sierra Nevada, but it's not, it's not the eastern Sierra. It's not Mount Whitney what you're seeing. But still, beautiful. full snow cap peaks and you can go skiing there sometimes of the year. I've never done that. But let me just say, I understand why it's popular and there are locations that are very, very touristy and I personally would not choose to go hang out in that part of the lake. But there's little coves and no one's there really. And like I said, you can climb up on these rocks and jump off of the rocks. And if you have it a paddleboard, which I would love to go back and paddle board. Oh, yeah.

You could go paddle boarding. Can you fish? They don't, I think so. They might not let you. I think so. I think they, yes, you can fish. You can fish because I do remember seeing someone fishing. But it's so clean.

Yeah. Like the fish don't nasty up the water, if that makes sense. And I'll muck it up. And do you know how to wakeboard? So they have, you can go wakeboarding, you can go water skiing. There's parasailing on there. Whoa. You can.

There's boats? There's, oh, yeah. There's people boating all the time. And then over by Inclined Village, there is this bike path and running path. And so my family went on a little walk run in the morning. And it was so, so wonderful. Like, one of my favorite runs of this year. I love wakeboarding.

Probably one of my favorite outdoor activities. I've done it a couple times, and I'm not very good at it. But all this to say, Lake Tahoe is overrated for a reason. That's called underrated. No. Definitionally, you're saying a lot of people like it and they're right. Yeah. But other people are like, I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know that.

That's underrated. That's what that is. That's got to be like the definition of the word. They're opposites. They're antonyms. Entenims. Entenoms. You're listening, read it.

Do it. Just do it. You're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. The opposite of trail is what? What's the endonym? Antonym of Trail? So, for my story. Wait, no, hang on.

What is the antonym of Trail? Bushwhack. Oh, I guess, yeah, you're right. You're right. Non-trail travel. Just like how my underrated place that I'm going to talk. about. My place that a lot of people say is good, but I didn't believe them. Underrated. Fine. I'm still titling the episode. Overrated. You're going to title the episode.

Places that I thought are well overrated, but actually weren't, and I figured out they weren't. That's not what I'm going to title it. Rather than underrated outdoor experience. Oh my gosh. That's not okay. So mine is near where I'm from in Atlanta, Georgia. And I went here when I was a little kid and before we went there I was like how cool can it be which was not the right thing to say because I like climbing on rocks I mentioned earlier this episode I like I'm a big fan of oh look boulder I'm there and so when someone said imagine boulder but bigger than you could ever think I was like yeah seems like just another mountain to me just another hike my dad used to love taking us on hikes and I was not appreciative until I was in my like late teens so that's

sometimes how it was yeah it took me a while I was a little kid I was like uh because I had little legs you know I think that's what a lot of little kids experience. We also talked about hype this episode. Believe it or not, I was really short until like early high school. I think you mentioned this to me. Yeah, I was super duper small. I was like the shortest kid in my class in middle school. Wow.

Except this one other kid who was like tiny, tiny. Okay. Which like was, which alleviated pretty all, pretty much all the bullying. So it was pretty good. Yeah. But I was small. I had little legs. I didn't like many hikes.

But my dad was like, this place is cool. It's called Stone Mountain. You probably? No, you haven't heard of it? I don't think I've heard of it. Okay. Everyone in Georgia and pretty much the south knows what it is. It's just like, it's called Stone Mountain because it's a mountain, but it's like one

giant boulder. It's like of a meteor slamming into the ground. It's pretty tall, normal mountain height, but it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, too. There's nothing else around it. So you can see it from the skyscrapers in Atlanta. You can look out and see like a lump in the distance. Oh, wow. And it's all pretty much like one big rock, which is crazy.

What's the veggie? vegetation like around it. Are there trees? It's bushes. Okay, it's forested. It's forested. And there's some trees and stuff that grow in like big cracks of the rock where dirt has instead of it. Oh, wow. Has like formed. So it's like have you seen like the pirates who don't do anything veggie tails? You know how like on the rock monsters there's trees and stuff that grow? It's like that. It's the one big giant rock, but there's stuff growing out of it. I'm going to take it from your expression. You've not seen the epic veggie tales movie, the pirates who don't do anything. No, I have not. But my homies out there know that the rock monster song is. gas. But that's why I said we went there and I was like, this place is okay. They have a side of it that's like more flat and like not the side you can climb. Yeah, you looked a picture of it.

I did look of a picture. It's a big stone. Really, really cool. And you can see. There's like a Mount Rushmore thing. There's like they carved some people's faces into one side, not as big as Mount Rushmore, but it's pretty cool on like the really steep side. Well, and the coloring of the rock's really interesting. It's like pretty pale. But there's streaks on it. There's streaks of dark from water spots that looks like. Um, but yeah, otherwise pretty whiteish in color. So there's like a steep side and then a side that like slants away kind of pretty far into the ground.

And that's the side that they got the main like trail on, which is, it's not only a trail because it's just like an air, like you're walking on stone. Um, so they just, it's just the, the trafficked area where people will go up to the top and look around and it's like in the top is entirely wind swept and like there's actually no trees up there. So you can get a pretty good view of, you can see like downtown Atlanta and Buckhead and like nearby locations and like a look and like other mountains like look at mountain can i saw mountain um so it's it's it's not look i'm on kennesaw mountain um so it's pretty cool and i was like this is

whatever it's a little slainy slopey trail and then my dad was like follow me and he took us around to another side of stone mountain uh which was a not as steep as like the mount rushmore faces guys side but still like a way steeper side that was like totally not it was totally off the trail Oh. And they have like little like lines that make like are like here's where you're supposed to go. I might have was like, we're not doing that. So we went around a different part and we just like climbed up the side of Stone Mountain when I was like pretty young. Probably like eight or like seven or something like that.

And it was so dope. It was so cool to just like boulder, but the boulder was like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet high. And we like our whole family did it at me and my little brothers. I remember my mom carrying one of my little brothers and one of those like things. Oh, baby carry. Yeah, baby carrier or that you wear like a backpack or something. And it felt really cool to get up to the top and like rejoin the trail. And I have everyone else be like, where did you come from?

Like that's just like a sheer cliff over there. And we're like, we're Drexler's. We're awesome. And then we got up to the top and it was super cool. And I was like, this was pretty cool. But I was not excited going. I remember being like, and then feeling super accomplished and being like, this place is amazing. Anyone who can get the chance to go to Stone Mountain and break the rules and climb around

the stuff and like just go wherever you want should do so. So it is, I would say it's underrated. Okay. I'll add it to my little bucket list. Would you say that this is the half dome of the East Coast? The half dome? The half dome. You guys have a half dome?

We have a half dome in Yosemite National Park in California. It's this ginormous rock. Yosemite. But it's a mountain. It's like 10,000 feet tall. Oh, it's kind of like the same thing. Yeah. Big old stone.

And half of it is. chopped off. And so there's... It's like a... What? Yeah. It's chopped. Yep. And so people will climb up that side, like, roped up and whatnot. But then there's a way you can go on the back side.

And... That's cool. I've always wanted to do that trail. I'm picturing a quarter of a sphere. It's, well, I'm trying to pull up a picture. Yeah, I don't... I'm bad with technology. It's also great that the viewer just can't say this at all. Well, I feel like most people know what half dome

is. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen this. I've seen pictures before. I just didn't know that was like a thing. Yeah. So that's half dome. Yeah, it's the half dome of the East Coast. I think it's a little bit smaller probably. Oh, definitely. This is really big. Yeah, it's a ginormous. I think it's like an eight or ten mile hike all the way up to the top. But it's cool because it's like in a kind of a flatter area. So it's kind of like the lonely mountain from the Hobbit. You can like look out and be like, we're almost there, Thornton. But I just remember like I work in some skyscrapers for work back home. And it's like always like a landmark you can see in the distance and no which direction it is. So. Well, that's awesome. Extramandarated place.

I will also say going back to places that are overrated, but for a reason, I would consider Yosemite. For a reason. Domeness is the dumbest thing of all time. You would consider Yosemite National Park notoriously like well rated. Everyone thinks it's cool. So yeah. It's very, very popular. And listen, I went there several, Storm, hang on, I went there several times when I was younger and I was like, cool, whatever.

But then as I was growing up, like, early high school, people kept talking about it. And I was like, okay, it wasn't that cool. And then I went back this summer with my dad and let me say it actually is really cool. So you were just wrong. It is not overrated because it's popular and it's well deserving of the popularity. It is, but I just have a thing against popular locations where I get it in my brain that like, oh, if it's popular, it's not. actually that cool. I don't know why I have this perception. Maybe this is just a me thing. But because everyone's like, oh, Yosemite, I love Yosemite, I was like, no. So you think that really

good things that are correctly rated or overrated, is what I'm hearing. I guess so. And then after going back this summer, I's like, wow. This is pretty underrated. In fact, more people should go. It's all highly rated enough. I just, I don't know. Well, you know what people. Episode total storm crashes out at Nicole's bookup. And they're like, I don't want to go to touristy locations. Yeah. That's how I feel about Yosemite. Okay, sure, it is very touristy.

It is crowded, but there are parts of it that are empty, and we brought our bikes and we biked around. And it was a very lovely experience. Touristy places aren't usually overrated. It's just they, like, the place is usually pretty cool, but there's just a lot of add-ons that are not desirable. Like when I went to New Orleans, I was like, this is awesome. I love this city.

I don't love all the New Orleans. stuff like the New Orleans themed things they want to sell me, but I like it. Yeah. Is New Orleans overrated? No, it's hype as heck. Okay, maybe you just changed my mind about the title of this episode. Let's call this one Storm wins. That's not at all that this is about, though.

That is an underlying theme of the podcast. Storm one, Nicole zero. All right. It's time to go. It is time to go. Thank you for listening to Off the Trip. on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors.

We'll see you out there. Happy trails. This is an underrated podcast. Bye, guys.