EJS 06 Challenge
Potato Salad hill
I would like to thank the volunteers who gave a few hours of there time to clean up after the party at potato salad hill during Easter Jeep Safari. I can not begin to list all the people that showed up during the week as I was not there more then Thursday. I can say that I know we had most of the later part of the week covered and a great turn out on Thursday. Included in the group on Thursday where multiple rock crawling teams, Warn, Banks power, Crawl Magazine, Rock buggy supply, I believe a rep from Primedia, Moab adventure channel, and Pro Comp tires. Pro Comp even brought trash bags and handed out a few Tshirts. Jody and Sara Everding from Raw X Racing even ran over to Hells revenge and retrieved a mattress and old tire to have taken to the dump.( I doubt that a 4 wheeler dropped that out of his Jeep.) I was honored to see so many people out picking up trash at sun up when I know damn well they had been out late the night before. This project was originally done to keep the bad press off the 4 wheelers but as I became more involved I learned a thing or two about some one who had only what was seen at potato salad hill and looked at that behavior as an example of all 4 wheelers. I think the quote went something like this “My perception of off roaders had been shattered, my faith in humanity has been restored”. Sara Melincoff . Sara was amazed at the turn out and impressed by the amount of volunteers that came out during Safari. I get the impression that she no longer sees 4 wheelers in the same light as she did the year before. I learned that by working together we found a common thread. I don’t believe there are any 4 wheelers that truly want to destroy what we have in Moab and know I can say we made the first step in convincing some one that we are not what you see at Potato Salad.
The right people are looking at what we have done this year and thinking hard about the future. Moab adventure channel (MAC21) spent all morning filming and doing interviews for next years programming. I imagine that Samantha will air what she has all year. As soon as the dust settles from taking 10 days off work I will start work on next years challenge. I hope to draw more media attention and expand the efforts out side of potato Salad hill to some of the trails that looked a little worse for wear during Safari. It was shame that we still found trash on every trail we ran.
I hope to raise funds to place recycle bins at the ends of a few trails that are accessible, and expand our clean up efforts at Potato Salad hill. It was fitting that we where on a hunt for trash during Easter Jeep Safari as the clean up turned into treasure hunt with some great finds including an ice chest full of ice, multiple wrenches and sockets, a full unopened bottle of Budweiser beer, a Buck knife, 2 screwdrivers, and a trailer ramp.
I hope that you will join us next year for what I hope will become an annual event.
If you where out there please post up your name, the day you where there and any treasure might have found. I am sorry I don’t have a complete list of volunteers so hopefully we can start one after the fact. Great job guys!
Jeff Knoll
