Ordinarily when I sit down to write a trip report, my story begins a few weeks before the adventure with some frantic preparations that were never quite as surprising as I make them out to be in the moment. This trip should have been no different, with all the ‘bugs’ in my new suspension and transmission barely worked out. But then again, this was no ordinary adventure. This was an EVENT, the first of it’s kind, and my club, the Trail Crew, was one of the event hosts.
The Calico Cleanup started, as many great plans do, as a casual discussion between two enthusiasts sitting around a campfire drinking a brew. Fellow Trail Crew club members Mark Watkins and Art Banks had already found a common bond in their enjoyment of this area and their mutual concern for its environmental quality. You see, while true desert aficionados like them had been doing what they could to leave the area cleaner than when they came, enough temporary transplants from the city had mistaken this desert jewel for a barren wasteland that would somehow benefit from the addition of their refuse to cause quite a visual impact on the maze of canyons in the area. Mark and Art dared to dream that their enthusiasm and organizational skills would be enough to band together a diverse group of outdoor enthusiasts who shared a mutual respect for this area. They picked a date….and started a movement!
Though I suppose I was destined to become involved in the event because of my club’s sponsorship role, I admit I had other reasons too. Though I had only been there once in almost three decades that I have been recreating outdoors, my interest in Calico had increased of late because of my association with John Hoag. John, known to many of us as the ‘Calico Kid’ not only has an obvious inclination towards this area [as evidenced by his moniker], but is one of those people whose demeanor is particularly well suited to desert adventure in general. An eclectic packrat with more stories than cigarettes, who is rarely clean shaven, it is obvious to those who have met him that John is most at home in the desert he has visited from his childhood. John’s own call for a Calico cleanup last year was not followed, but may well have planted the seed for this year’s event. Naturally, John’s enthusiasm proved infectious for many of us.
As Mark and Art drew together a group of seven to form the core committee, everyone got busy with their many individual tasks. The following is offered as one of MANY worthy examples of our committee’s ‘get-er-done’ attitude. Calico Kid had previously pitched the idea of having an event-oriented burlap bag that the TLCA could use to promote the image of environmentally-conscious off roaders. At our local club’s January meeting, John, Mark, Art and I decided to move this project forwards on our own….fast track! After two short but intense weeks of muddling thru several failed logo designs, we picked a no-frills, get-it-done version and John slipped into his ‘army-of-one’ hat…and paint mask! Three weekday workdays and many rattle cans later we had 400 plus hand stenciled burlap bags ready to donate to the event thanks to John. Likewise, Art, Mark and the other committee members repeatedly blurred the lines of their traditional work days to make sure that event deadlines were not missed. It was obvious to me that they were all 100 percent committed to ensuring that the event would be a success.
Within a few days of deciding the event warranted a website, one was designed and operating, www.calicocleanup.com. With the 21st century option of online registration, our numbers quickly swelled beyond our initial estimates. And swelled again. Within a week it was obvious that our original plans to ‘stage’ the event in Mule Canyon were no longer feasible. The BLM picked out a much larger staging at the mouth of the canyon, which they told us would keep things manageable. With a scant week to spare, our numbers swelled beyond the safe limits of that staging area as well, and we reluctantly moved our ‘operation’ to the dry lake bed. Knowing full well the fickle nature of the desert winds in this area, we were more than a little concerned with this choice of venues. But the die had been cast: our little cleanup of 200 to maybe 300 civic-minded enthusiasts was now approaching 800!
Our normally laid-back club meeting the week before the event took on an unusually serious tone, as we discussed in earnest the numerous details ahead of us. You see, our club had volunteered to be in charge of cooking the barbeque for this entire assemblage. With Mark’s unique method of assigning tasks, I was spared kitchen duty in exchange for three other ‘functions’. In no particular order of importance, I was to man a booth for the TLCA and BRC, play guitar for the masses before the raffle, and write this article. The rest of the Trail Crew were not involved in the lunch were tapped to lead one of the twelve trail assignments for the day.
I made the slow and uneventful drive up Friday afternoon, taking a little extra time to leave behind the ‘city’ mentality with a drive on Route 66 from Victorville to Barstow. I told my non-TLCA friends they could easily find our camp amidst the throng by keeping an eye out for my easily recognizable blue FJ45 pickup. Astronomical odds notwithstanding, I pulled into camp to find that there was already an identical blue early model FJ45 in attendance! So much for that theory.
Mark Watkins was of course already in full swing, relaxed and confident, still making sure that details and deadlines continued to be met. I set up camp in ‘the eye of the storm,’ across from the Friday night registration booth. I spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening walking around and meeting the new faces of Toyota owners who somehow all seemed to know who I was. I played guitar for a couple of hours and the campfire and went to sleep knowing that the scene I would awake to in the morning would be very different to the one I closed my eyes to.
Saturday started with a hum and a honk. You see, the dry lake bed we were camped on is situated approximately 1 mile from the interstate that connects Southern California with Las Vegas and points North. So while the headlights of this national artery failed to probe us with any intensity, we were ‘serenaded’ for the duration of our stay with the sounds of commerce. Our camp had indeed swelled during the night, but not as much as I had expected. During the previous evening, we had observed a number of vehicles across the access road heading up into Mule Canyon. It seemed that the trend had continued, with more than a hundred attendees electing to set up their base camp away from our bowl of dust.
John Kuzma helped me finish setting up the canopy that for the remainder of the day would be our recruiting area and respite from the sun. The good folks across the way in the registration booth soon had more than their hands full, as the energized and well-intentioned line of do-gooders stretched further and further back across camp waiting for their chance to sign a waiver, collect a complimentary t-shirt, burlap bag, a wrist band entitling them to a free lunch, and a pair of snazzy leather gloves donated by the FJ Cruiser Trail Team. The planned 9 AM departure came and went again as the line of registrants continued unabated. As I recall, it was closer to 10AM by the time the committee rallied the troops for the official driver’s meeting and the group disbursed for their various trail assignments.
For the next few hours, these good folks swarmed out across the nearby desert canyons like busy worker ants, utilizing their various recreational vehicles of choice to collect and return to our camp an enormous pile of detritus. As Mark summed it up in his own post-event report:
…we recovered 16 tons of trash, (5) abandoned cars, installed (200) trail signs, (2) BLM kiosks, and cleaned up the graffiti in each of the canyons. We used Del Albright's recreational incident command system to coordinate and run our event and it worked flawlessly. Thanks to Banks Power, Trail Crew/TLCA L.A. County fed over 740 hungry volunteers from various 4WD clubs from California, Arizona, and Nevada. Over $5000 was raised from our raffle to benefit Friends of the Rubicon, Discovery Trails, and Blue Ribbon Coalition.
Four enormous roll-off trash containers were donated to our cause, and they were all full by the time the weekend was over.
Back in camp, things were still in motion as well. The Trail Crew wasted no time once the attendees were out on the trail getting the meal preparation under way. As our new marketing VP Jason Phillips and I looked on from our strategic vantage point [approximately 5 feet away!] these guys fussed over several hundred pounds of mesquite coals that had been brought in to help cook among other things 300 lbs of carne asada! On the other side of the kitchen, the BLM had set up tables with boxes of very user-friendly maps of the California desert, and I of course was one of many who could not resist the temptation to add a few more maps to my fairly large collection.
On the other side of our booth, our club treasurer Phil Aaland and his wife Norma faithfully managed the raffle ticket table on the side of their motor home for the duration of the event, faithfully reminding every purchaser that they could double their chances of winning by throwing both halves of their ticket into the raffle drum! Way to go Phil! Special thanks to Chad Oellien and the West Coast 4WD club for procuring and use of the raffle drum.
Club president Dave West was not shy about recruiting anyone within shouting distance to help out, reasoning that everyone came with a volunteer attitude anyways. So I was less than surprised that within minutes of completing their 300+ mile drive in from Stockton, Dave had put ‘the arm’ on Georg Esterer and his girlfriend to help dispense beverages in the chow line, which they did graciously. The line seemed for a while like it might never end, but eventually it did, and the worker ants on both sides of the serving tables were able to sit, tired but happy.
And sit they did. The afternoon dragged on, with the masses patiently waiting for the raffle, which was also behind schedule. This had as much to do with Mark’s determination to give EVERY attendee a chance to return to camp as anything else. Eventually, even Mark had to relent on this commitment and the raffle got under way. Past president Ron Quivitas, who now drives for the FJ Trail Team, humorously emceed the raffle, complete with intermittent bursts of not-ready-for-prime-time stand-up comedy. This was a hidden ‘talent’ we had not bargained for, but which certainly served to take the remaining ‘edge’ off of anyone’s impatience.
Within scant minutes of concluding the raffle, our attendees reinacted their own version of the abandoning of Calico, and our camp went from 600 to 60 again. Hands were shaken, backs were patted and chairs were put away. The show was over, and it was time to PARTY! Those of us who stayed were treated to previously hidden kegs of beer, bags of pork rinds, more carne asada, more campfires, more music, and entertainment provided by none other than the notorious Mickey Rubicon. I won’t give you all the details here, but suffice it to say that somehow, someway, Mickey left an impression on EVERYONE that night. Mark Watkins on the other hand managed to leave an impression…. ON MY TENT!
Sunday, a small group of us [seven to be exact] elected to take our trucks, which were now packed with all of our belongings, and go on our own tour of the canyons. Our loads made our traveling caravan a little slower, but also offered those of the group who elected to remain the opportunity to pretty much camp wherever they felt like. Before we could leave camp though, there was the matter of John’s exhaust. It seems that Calico’s six shooter 2F engine had ‘shot’ the tailpipe right off of his header. Eeek. Art graciously loaned us the use of a portable DC welder. Two hours, two car batteries and two dusty backs later, we had John’s exhaust back in usable condition. Note to self: portable welders are a good thing.
I left the remains of the group around 3pm, electing to take a detour to Mojave on my way home. As I drove across highway 58, I reminisced. The last time I had driven this route had been on one of my very first excursions in my Landcruiser, almost 20 years earlier. Then, this particular stretch of desert had seemed particularly unappealing, even for my desert-biased taste. Now, twenty years later, the hills and valleys of this scarcely-claimed land called for me, beckoning further exploration.
In the same speechless manner as the invitation, I replied with a wink. I have new maps. I will be back.