PIEDMONT - A couple of decals on Pete Cannata's UTV off-road vehicle sum up his hobby.

"Life by the drop," is a Stevie Ray Vaughn lyric from a rock-and-roll song that urges "No time wasted, we're alive today."

The other decal on his UTV, "Mid-Life Crisis," is a concession to his age.

Cannata, 50, is in the Black Hills this weekend for the Black Hills UTV Rally, riding a type of vehicle that makes off-road riding less extreme and more comfortable. That can only accelerate an off-roading boom that already has sparked debate about new, stricter off-roading rules.

The 50-year-old Cannata, who works for a private prison company, recently switched from a smaller, more agile ATV, or all-terrain vehicle, to a bigger, more comfortable UTV - a Polaris RZR (pronounced razor).

UTV stands for utility vehicle. Yamaha and Arctic Cat also make popular models - the Rhino and the Prowler.

The side-by-side seating of the beefier UTV allows Cannata to sit next to his wife and navigator, Ginger Cannata, who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs. "She can read the map and point out wildlife," he said.

The UTV even has seatbelts and a roof, and there's a GPS on the dash..

Arctic Cat representative Don Shetler of Phoenix said most UTV sales that city are to recreational riders - especially for riding in nearby sand dunes.

Still, the Polaris RZR can get 60 miles per gallon, and it's just a couple inches wider than an ATV, so it can negotiate most trails. But it's more comfortable and hauls more lunch than an ATV.

The Black Hills UTV Rally, which runs through tomorrow, is headquartered at the Top 50 Rally Park in Piedmont, just west of I-90 on the service road.

Within minutes of a short interview, the Cannatas were following a line of a hundred or so UTVs snaking their way up a switchback trail, climbing a ridge into the Black Hills for a back-country ride to Deadwood.

Rally organizer Jesse Jurrens, who owns the Top 50, says the event signals both the growing popularity of UTVs for recreation and the growing importance of establishing organized trailheads in the Black Hills.

The U.S. Forest Service this month is expected to roll out proposed rules for an off-roading trail system in the Black Hills. "We want the Top 50 Rally Park to be instrumental in that trail system," he said.

Jurrens hopes the Black Hills rally becomes an annual event.

Jurrens also hopes to persuade the state Department of Transportation to let him drive a tunnel under S.D. Highway 79 to give his rally park access to the Black Hills to the west.

Jurrens is working with the Forest Service, too.

Black Hills National Forest supervisor Craig Bobzien spoke at the rally's opening ceremony Saturday morning. Bobzien told the UTV riders that the new off-roading rules for the Black Hills would help motorized and nonmotorized forms of recreation co-exist. "We want to sustain the resource," he said.

The pressure on "the resource" will be intense. Tom Blair of Deadwood, who is on a governor's task force working on the state's role in regulating off-road riding, said there were more ATV and UTV sales in South Dakota in the past year than snowmobiles registered in the past decade.

"It's exploding," Blair said.

Blair also reminded the off-roaders that other interest groups would have a say in the new off-roading rules, including advocates for peace and quiet. He told them about an elderly Native American woman at an off-roading meeting who told Blair, "Everybody else comes out here to play, but I come out here to pray."

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com