Spooktacular Treasure Trails 2011

Sunny skies and warm days welcomed everyone to our Treasure Trails off road event. A 40 mile trail had been laid out up into Arroyo Salado Wash, and State Park Permits were all acquired. As participants poured in to set up their camps on Friday... Goblins were busy working on the Haunted House, disguised as Treasure Trails Volunteers. More than 30 volunteers worked to put the spooky house together with Amis Gilson as the head Ghoulie. The Hut was all decorated by our favorite little Decor Diva... Della Butler.  Shirts were stacked and folded, candy was in the cauldron, hot dogs and nachos were hot and ready... Bar refreshments were chilled, Volunteers were in their stations... Everything and everyone was ready for our 4 PM opening right on schedule.

We had great music on Friday and Saturday nights provided by Hojo Risin’. Everyone enjoyed the guys and their music. Saturday morning the SSB POA had super yummy Breakfast Burritos for sale. We all appreciated the POA getting up in the wee hours of the morning to make those for us! Saturday afternoon David and his able crew set up a BBQ feast right outside the Hut... Totally delicious, Thank you David!

 Thank you to all 283 participants who had preregistered by 10-15. This helps give us some idea how many might attend, which is very important information! One of those 283 was the lucky winner of the $100.00 cash prize sponsored by Fran Aldrige and Jack Wood. Thank you Fran and Jack!  This year we had 541 actual registrations for this event. Most of the participants ran the poker trail on Saturday. But, some played “arm chair poker” by drawing all 5 cards right there at the Hut. Everyone paid the same registration fee.

16 High hands won from $500.00 to $60.00. There were 9 Low hand winners from $250.00 to $95.00. Total cash pay out for poker hands was $4,473.00. Congratulations to all who won! We’re sorry there were no Trail Prizes hidden on the trails. We deeply regretted having to alter our family event because of a few participants who had behaved badly at previous events. We are just trying to make this fair to everyone who pays to participate in our events.

 But thanks to all of our local sponsors and Red Earth Casino we still had $2,750.00 in Un-Trail Prizes! Winners for those cash and/or slot play prizes were drawn from Hang Tag Numbers. All who registered were potential winners. A VERY BIG THANKS to our poker hand judges, Dean and Chuck.

 Saturday afternoon there were 20 little artist’s who drew their finest pumpkins in 3 age groups.

3 and Under: 1st place was Ellee Jean

                        2nd place was Nevaeh

                        3rd place was Junior de la Cruz

Ages 4-6:        1st place was Jayleena Henderson

                        2nd place was Wyatt Stafford

                        3rd place was John Thompson

Ages 7-12        1st place was Preston Wise

                        2nd place was Abbi

                        3rd place was Andrew Morris

The kids won event T-shirts for their winning pictures. Thanks to our volunteer judges: Wendi Westlake, Dick & Marilyn Smith, Wally Alexander and Mary Kay House! This was not an easy job!

Shawna had her able crew helping sign up everyone who wanted to enter the costume contest in 6 different age groups. This year we had 93 humans and 2 pets entered. Mark and DJ Simpson of Mars Racing provided participation medallions, and toys for all of the kids! Thank you Mars Racing, this was a real treat for all of the kids!! The winners were:

Under 2:         1st place was Adam

                        2nd place was Ryan

                        3rd place was Alexis

Ages 2-4:        1st place was Syayan

                        2nd place was Aiden

                        3rd place was Ellee

Ages 5-7:        1st place was Emma/Aquarium

                        2nd place was Kayna

                        3rd place was Olivia/Raggedy Ann

Ages 8-12:      1st place was Preston/Gangster

                        2nd place was Nolan/Sniper

                        3rd place was Sesley

Ages 13-20:    1st place was Josh/Pirate

                        2nd place was Kyle/Zombie

                        3rd place was Beka/Hello Kitty

Ages 21-Over 1st place was the Gnome Family

                         2nd place was Mike/Michael Jackson

                         3rd place was JoJo

Best Pet Winner was Abagail for a $20 Petco Card.

All of these winners received trophies... Everyone did a great job getting dressed up in costumes!! Our volunteer judges for this contest are also greatly appreciated! Thanks to: Wendi Westlake, Mary Kay House, Wally Alexander, Ron and Nicole Merton, Belinda Lassel Yong and Christina Chavarra... It was a difficult task handled well! Thank you judges!!

The Haunted House was the last contest to be judged on Saturday. This was the second year we had used this house and it was even better than the first year!  On Friday Amis began the job of putting up canvases to create walls, and divided the house into sections for others to come in and set up their displays. At 3AM on Saturday Amis was in on the POA burrito-building task. Then Amis and his crew spent the rest of Saturday finishing the Haunted House... On Sunday a very bedraggled Amis won 3rd place for his Porta-Pottie Crew display in the Haunted House. The $100.00 cash prize was sponsored by Jenny Sifton and Buster Reid. Crystal Mercado and her sister Amanda Burnell won 2nd place with their Living Dead displays. Their cash prize of $150.00 was sponsored by Paul Brown and Chuck & Jan Seybert. Mark Ballard created the Dead Zone for the 1st place prize of $200.00. This cash prize was sponsored by Carl Raymondo, Art & Kathy Cockerham and by Dean & Carlene Ness. The following groups all received Honorable Mentions: Marilyn Ballard was the Dead Gypsy Woman with her Ouija board. Kids in the Dirt set up quad wrecks, then others worked the space for them because Kids in the Dirt were doing double duty as part of our Security Crew. Red Earth Casino set up the Hanging Man, and out in the back Chain Saw guy got quite a few of us... Thank you each and every one who worked in the heat for long hours, wore yourselves out dragging bodies, walls, porta potties and loads of spooky stuff and equipment to the site, and then got in costumes to sweat even more... YOU made our Haunted House the best Salton Sea Scream Ever!!! You did a great job every one of you! (Of course the next day volunteers had to drag everything back to be put away.) Our judges for this contest were; Linda and Ken Neal, Ronna Arias, and Irene Bright. Thank you judges.   We know it isn’t easy to judge goblins and their spooky spaces when you are busy screaming!

Sunday morning at 10 AM Debbie Bvrd sang our Na­tional Anthem to start off the awards program. Thank you Debbie... you did a lovely job. Bob Butler was our MC and on stage to help him were Jessika New­berry and Shawna Dungey. It wasn't long after he started that our PA system malfunctioned. It made for a rough time hearing, but someone from the audience stepped up with a small system to fill in... Thank You to whoever that was!!

Ray Childs took over the MC duties to hand out all of the Red Earth Casino prizes, with Scott from the Casino there to assist. Severed hands, tombstones, creepy black rats and Edgar Allen Crows were the "Un-Trail" prizes Red Earth sponsored for a total of $2,500.00 in cash and/or Slot Play prizes. Red Earth also donated duffle bags filled with shirts, hats, mugs and more for our raffle. They donated more in sup­plies for our event... And they sent the crowd into a rowdy frenzy with their ever-popular Crowd Toss­es... (We are sure they'll rethink the part about the decks of cards and tool sets before the next crowd toss at our February event.) Thank you good neigh­bors Red Earth Casino! We appreciate all you do for Treasure Trails, and our West Shores Community on a very regular basis!

Bob took back the microphone to continue with the rest of the awards program. More local sponsors had donated for the Skeleton prizes. All of the winners were drawn from Hang Tag numbers. Total amount awarded for poker hands, haunted house, and "Un- Trail" prizes combined was $7,673.00.

But our very generous sponsors had donated even more... Still more cash and other prizes were then drawn for from raffle tickets. Our Sponsors make our events whole... You are all greatly appreciated for your support.

A renowned local artist, Jack Gable, donated one of his landscape paintings to our event for our raffle. It was decided to have an auction for his work instead of putting it in the raffle. The bidding was started at $50.00 and Myrna and Larry Bennett won the lovely piece of artwork for $325.00. Myrna then paid for the piece and turned around and donated it right back to Treasure Trails to auction all over again! Russell Waters won it the second time for a bid of $375.00!  Treasure Trails has the best sponsors on the planet!!  Thank you Jack, Myrna, Larry and Russell!

We also lay claim to the best volunteers in the universe... Carlene and Dean Ness had worked many hours prior to the event lining up volunteers for all of the jobs. We needed judges, checkpoint people, helpers for the costume and art contests, people to work registration, more at preregistration, people to tend bar, others to help move heavy tables, put up signs and clean out the Hut. Still more were needed for shirt shop and the snack bar, Security, and Raffle. Haunted House would need ticket sellers and monitors, as well as the actual goblins, and of course the trash cans would need tending as would the all-important porta-potties. Dean and Carlene made sure every job was handled, and they filled in themselves as needed all weekend long. One of our volunteers woke up Saturday morning with a clean trash can liner in bed next to him... He said if he woke up the next day with a roll of TP in bed with him he was going to have to quit volunteering! We promised Dean we wouldn’t tell anyone which volunteer this was. Did you know... Each of our events requires 80 to 100 volunteers? Treasure Trails could not do these events without the assistance of all of our volunteers!! We also appreciated the help of whoever happened to be close by at the time to help move heavy tables... Or dump buckets of water... Or lug heavy ice chests... We asked, and you pitched in on the spot... THANK YOU!

Treasure Trails also thanks the Salton Sea Beach Fire Department for keeping us watered down, serving as our Security, and remaining on site while on stand by for any emergency. They also give us a place for our meetings and provide all the ice for our events. Thank you SSB FD! We thank SSB Tractor Dude Harold Herzberg for all he does to keep us on level ground, as well as stacked and tidied up. And our George Stiehler gets many thanks too for making sure we always have the church in place in the Hut, and for reorganizing the shed after every event... (mostly without grumbling). Thank you gentlemen. And thank you to all who participated in our event. Without you, there would be no events.

Treasure Trails will host a Thank You luncheon in March 2012 for all of our wonderful Volunteers and Sponsors.

 Treasure Trails works extremely hard to provide enjoyable events for entire families, in a safe environment. To the less than 1% who caused disturbances at our event... Your poor conduct is a direct reflection on Treasure Trails. Your bad behavior puts our entire TT organization at risk. Your thoughtless actions can have our events shut down, our licenses, permits and even our organizational status revoked. Bad behavior will not be tolerated at Treasure Trails events.

 Treasure Trails Inc. is a non profit organization. The board of directors consists of just 9 volunteers. We all missed our Treasurer Roni who was at home recovering from back surgery. We are glad to report she is doing quite well. Net proceeds from our two annual events are donated back to the West Shores Community. Emergency Responders, Schools, Churches, and other nonprofit service organizations all benefit from our donations.  Work has already begun on our

46th Annual Treasure Trails Event

February 10, 11, 12, 2012

Here are the pictures of Spooktacular 2011

Treasure Trails welcomes any and all sponsors, and volunteers are always needed. It’s never too early to sign up for the next event...

Volunteer Coordinator is

Carlene Ness: 760-395-0770

Sponsor/Raffle Coordinator is

Jessika Newberry 760-394-4224

or call Chris Brickel: 760-395-1084

Treasure Trails would like to remind everyone that it is Your Responsibility to know and follow all Off Highway Rules and Regulations at all times.   Offenders can and will be issued citations by CHP, Sheriff’s Deputy’s, or State Park Personnel

Be Safe and Always Ride Responsibly!