Ocotillo Wells Earth Day Clean Up- Apr 21, 2007

Pretty mellow weekend. Adam, James, and I met up with a few people in Ocotillo Friday night. It was really quiet. We drove around a little bit and then just hung out in camp.

The next morning we did a little prerun for trash and then headed over to the Ranger station.

The cleanup crew consisted of about 25 girl scouts and a couple handfuls of guys from the Dezertrangers.com forum.

We figured the girl scouts would concentrate on the immediate surrounding area, so Adam, James and I went down by the Blue Inn and picked up trash along the side of road.

Our original intent was to try and make our way back to the ranger station. But we only got up to about County Line Road when we completely filled the back of my truck with SMALL trash items.

The type of trash in Ocotillo was much different from the 2006 Barstow Cleanup. In Barstow, people were finding lots of large items like appliances and entire cars. We were too cool for trash wands, so we were bending down to our hands and knees picking up hundreds of small articles of trash stuck in bushes and halfway buried in the sand.

We were pretty amazed at how much trash we picked up in the time we were out there. The sad thing is we barely even scratched the surface. There was tons of trash near the camp grounds and all along the road. We could have easily cleaned all day and not have finished.

Participating in another organization’s clean up event was a good experience for us because it gave us a better idea of the volunteer’s perspective. As a cleanup organizer, the bulk of our efforts go into the logistics of the event and making sure everything is taken care of. Being a volunteer helped give us more ideas on how to serve our volunteers better and help them as we work together to clean up the deserts.

Though the turnout was pretty small, it was a good experience and we’ve got lots of new ideas for our upcoming cleanup.

See you in the dez,
Ray