#12 May 2003
Welcome to the Foundation’s twelfth E-News, an end-of-the-month monthly newsletter designed to keep you up-to-date with developments and progress related to the San Diego Sea to Sea Trail.
Maxim of the month
Concrete is heavy, iron is hard - but the grass will prevail.
Edward Abbey
Welcome to our summer intern
We’re thrilled to welcome Katie Field to the Foundation to fulfill an internship position with us from mid-June for six weeks. Katie’s a fourth-year Psychology and Environmental Education major at UC Berkeley, and will be working to expand the Foundation’s education program.
Trail updates
Many thanks to Mike Towne and the City of Poway for donating Mike’s time and a grader to build two large berns on the Sabre Springs section of Trail. These will greatly help reduce the water damage on this section of Trail. Bob Murphy of the City of San Diego also came out to help.
Trail days the work goes on!
June 8 and 29 we’ll be working out below Nokia on the east side of the I-15 and just south of Poway Road, doing some interesting Trail widening and stream bed armoring and diversions. Please e-mail Kristen if you would like to join us on these dates, and for directions.
We had a great morning out on May 18th, on the western end of the Poway section of Trail. We concreted in place three new Trail markers, created new run-off berns and cleared a good section of overgrowth with weed-eaters. Many thanks to stalwarts Chuck, Jeff, Dan and Joe, and to new faces Alvin, Al, Doug and Heather. Doug and Heather have moved all the way from Massachusetts to volunteer on the Trail!
Trail goodies
Here’s the perfect opportunity to show you care in your support for the Foundation and the Trail, and to tell the world you’ve been out there. For your very own Foundation T-shirts, travel mug, coffee mug, Trail baseball cap and bumper sticker, just click here.
Geocaching hits the Trail!
Welcome to all those in the local geocaching community who took the time to join us at our pre-launch for the Foundation’s DeepOutdoors Geocaching Challenge, at REI on 
May 21st. Ninety-one of you groaned as someone else won the new $500 all-color Magellan Meridian GPS!
Got a GPS and a sense of adventure? Then this is for you! The DeepOutdoors & Sea to Sea Trail Foundation Geocaching Challenge will run along the entire length of the Trail, kicking off on June 7 to help celebrate National Trails Day. DeepOutdoors has donated 25 cool prizes for the 25 caches that will be hidden along the Trail. Prizes include DeepOutdoors fleeces and daypacks. Additional cache prizes are also being donated by geocaching.com. And Magellan has donated two GPS units as well as cool additional prizes! For more details, click here.
National Trails Day
Saturday, June 7 is National Trails Day 2003, and this year’s theme is ‘Healthy Trails, Healthy People'. If you’re not into geocaching, then there’s a party at Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve at 10am, to officially open the new stretch of Trail between Black Mountain Road and the I-15. Join Mayor Murphy and all the Rangers and Foundation volunteers who worked so hard to make this all happen!
Using a map and compass
For all you wanted to know about using a map and compass, but were too afraid to ask, this is the ultimate Web site - a feature of Rick Curtis’ book, The Backpacker’s Field Manual. Because the batteries in your GPS can go flat
Web stats
We launched the Web site May 4 2002, and this month, May 2003, we hit the one million hits mark!
Qualcomm on the Trail
Sixty Qualcomm employees from the Wireless Business Solutions Group recently devoted a Friday to working on the Trail as part of a team building event. Working in Oakoasis and El Capitan Open Space Preserves, their work encompassed Trail clearing, stuffing oakum between the split logs of the historic 1936 house in Oakoasis, clearing ice-plant for native habitats, repainting an interpretive center and helping with the re-route of the Trail at the eastern end of El Capitan. In just three hours, the volunteers made a huge impact. “The Qualcomm volunteers were everything we hoped for and then some," said County of San Diego Senior Ranger, Craig Julene. “Fantastic is the w
ord I’m looking for." Director of the Parks & Recreation Department, Renee Bahl, and Chief of the Open Space Division, Cory Linder, were pleasantly pleased when they stopped by to inspect the work under way. And the workers themselves had a great time: “Thanks for showing us a great natural environment that we can work together to share with San Diego community," said Qualcommer Geryfer Marcelino. “It will always be my pleasure to help out any activities to enhance Sea to Sea Trail maintenance." To view photos taken on the day, just click here.
If a team building event out on the Trail would be of interest to your company, please e-mail Kristen.
Updated Trail maps
With the trusty help of dedicated volunteers, we’re now offering marked-up USGS topo maps of the Trail as it currently stands. Courtesy of Philip Erdelsky, we’ve maps from the Pacific Ocean to Wildcat Canyon Road. Click here to see them. Philip is regularly adding maps to the site, so keep an eye out for his updates.
Backpacker Get Out More Tour!
Backpacker’s Get Out More Tour folks are back on the road and coming to REI on June 26 at REI for 7pm. The Foundation will also be there, helping to spread the word. Amy and Brent are part of the Backpacker Road Team and have an incredible show and presentation on getting into the outdoors. Last year this event drew over 100 people and was a great success. Don’t miss out on this one! Click here for more details.
Race Across AMerica starting in San Diego
2003’s RAAM is starting in San Diego for the very first time, on June 15 for the solo riders and June 16 for the team racers. RAAM Race Coordinator, Bill Peschka, has extended an invitation to all local bike clubs to follow the solo participants in the parade. This could turn out to be the largest group bike ride in San Diego history. If you want to be a part of the action, you’ll need to be at Holiday Inn On The Bay opposite Star of India on Harbor Drive in downtown San Diego, for a 0700 start. The route goes to the Convention Center, Gaslamp Quarter, past the NBC building, Balboa Park, El Cajon Boulevard, Texas Street, Friars Road, Zion Avenue, Waring Road, Navajo Road, Fletcher Parkway and Broadway in El Cajon, where the race will start. NBC and Outdoor Life Network (OLN) will televise the parade and race start. For more details about the race and the teams entered, go to Race Across AMerica.
Salton Sea Web viewing
Many thanks to Deborah Stern who pointed out a wonderful Web site on the Salton Sea. Kim Stringfellow’s site accompanies her traveling exhibit of photos, found objects and related ephemera, called Greetings from the Salton Sea.
Trail Events 2003
We have so many events running to date, there’s too many to list here. Check them all out.
Book now for OE2003 events
Book now for our Outdoors Education 2003 events for middle school children, to be held along the Trail and looking at environmental issues facing San Diego COunty. For all information on the events, click here. Our OE2003 events now have a very cool flyer if you’d like copies to distribute at a middle school near you, please e-mail Kristen.
Make your own Trail maps!
Want to customize your own maps of the Trail? Well, now you can. We’ve partnered with MapCard and MyTopo to bring you the latest nationwide US Geological Survey topographic maps and aerial photos, lake contour data, road and highway overlays, public land survey data, and an impressive suite of annotation tools. In fact, the editors at Backpacker magazine awarded MapCard its Editors’ Choice Award for Best New Product of 2003, saying, “The best one-stop map shop we’ve seen is as close as your home computer." MapCard offers subscribers the ability to customize, save and print unlimited topos and air photos. With this link, you can take a free 24-hour test drive. The site has a terrific set of annotation tools enabling you to draw trails, insert text, mark waypoints from their GPS device, etc. on your own map. Try it out by clicking here. For an example of a customized MapCard map, check out the map here. And if you subscribe to MapCard and MyTopo from the Foundation’s Web site, you help support the Foundation.
New Web page Trail Training
Courtesy of Trail Friend Virginia Haddad, we’ve update the Web’s Trail Training page, utilizing Virginia’s experience as a teacher of yoga. To have a balanced workout, it’s necessary to equally work three essential aspects of physical fitness: endurance, strength, and flexibility. Walking the long stretches of the Trail will ensure the first, biking or hiking its inclinations will develop the second and starting and ending with a little yoga will promote the last. Check it all here. And if you’ve any tips for everyone else, feel free to send them into us.
Sign up to the Foundation’s eScrip Program!
As another way of raising money for the Foundation’s education program, we’re thrilled we’ve been accepted into the national eScrip Program. Many of you, especially those with school-aged children, may be already familiar with eScrip. eScrip’s a hassle-free way for non-profits such as the San Diego Sea to Sea Trail Foundation that support children’s programs to raise funds through everyday purchases made at eScrip merchants.
eScrip and over 150 merchant partners have created a system that rewards customer loyalty by contributing a percentage of purchases to your chosen group. You shop the way you like to shop (grocery shopping, buying clothes, travel and entertainment). It’s simple, safe and convenient; all you need to do is register your grocery club card and debit/credit card(s). It’s also simple to register:
Log on to http://www.escrip.com/ and go to ‘sign up’ (orange bar at the top), or e-mail Kristen for details.
Designate the Foundation to receive contributions. Our Group ID is #150734477.
Register your grocery club card from a participating merchant, your Chevron card and your debit/credit cards.
And that’s it! Visit eScrip merchants to shop and earn. It’s automatic! For more information, just click here.
Sign up as a Friend of the Foundation or renew your membership for 2003
We’re very keen for our valuable supporters for 2002, to look on their Friends donation as an annual membership to the San Diego Sea to Sea Trail Foundation. To assist us in our ongoing mission, feel free to renew your membership for 2003, or join up as a Friend of the Foundation, by clicking here and helping us make it all happen! And don’t forget to check out our valued Supporters page.
Adopt a Tree out on the Trail!
Adopting a tree a native California Oak or Sycamore along the route of the San Diego Sea to Sea Trail is a gift for a 1,000 years. Not only is it a wonderful gift for someone close to you, or even for yourself, but it is an excellent way to help support the building and maintenance of the Trail. And importantly it helps preserve and add to the Trail’s native habitats. All for $100.
Adopting a tree is easy. We do all the work for you, working with the agencies along the Trail to identify the planting sites, order the five-gallon trees, plant and care for the planting sites. And for your support, we’ll send you or your loved ones, a certificate of their adoption. For more information, just click here.
Traveling?
If so, try Orbitz.com. Just click here and then click on the Orbitz button. Every time you make a travel reservation of any sort, the Foundation receives a commission. That means more of the San Diego Sea to Sea Trail can be built and maintained for your enjoyment, and more of its environmental and historical treasures can be preserved for future generations.
Schools Community Service Credit
If you know of anyone who needs to collect credits for their community service projects, then we may be just the right project for them. We’ve got lots of opportunities for students to join us on Trail Work Days in the weekends. And if there’s an entire group or class who would like to get out on the Trail working as a team, we can arrange a workday just for them, any day of the week. The teams will by fully supervised by Rangers (as are all our workdays), and it’s a great outdoors experience! Our Volunteer Program Application Form can be found by clicking here, and includes a section specifically for California Schools Community Service Credit. Please e-mail Kristen for further information.
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For previous issues of E-News, click here.
