ARTICLE & PHOTOS BY BOB ALEXANDER
TDS Desert Safari 2011 – It’s a Wrap T Roger Daniel Alignment was one of over 100 vendors displaying products for the thousands of attendees to view at this year’s TDS Desert Safari
he members, families, sponsors and vendors for the 2011 Tierra Del Sol Desert Safari would like to extend their deepest appreciation and special thanks to all of our guests who attended this year’s event. The turnout was tremendous surpassing last’s years overall attendance and everyone seemed to have a great time. We were lucky and the weather was beautiful for the entire event and during the Saturday night raffle the temperature was pleasant and there was no wind, which as many of you know has not always been the case. This year was very special and coinciding with Desert Safari, we had the
grand opening of the Truckhaven 4x4 Training facility. State Assemblyman Brian Jones and Kathy Dolinar from State Parks spoke to the crowd and participated in the ribbon cutting ceremony Friday afternoon. Once opened many people spent the weekend on the 21 obstacles. The idea for the training facility was presented to State Parks management by Tierra Del Sol and once accepted, State Parks trail crews, Tierra Del Sol and W.E. Rock combined forces to collect donations of materials and with over 2500 man hours of hard physical labor built the obstacles in a 31 acre section of Ocotillo Wells, very near to where TDS has their headquarters for Desert Safari.
Let me share a few stats
from this year’s event. There were 1207 officially registered for the event. The trail this year was over 12 miles long, with 5
checkpoints, and covered a variety of mild to wild notches and hill climbs all
Winner of the active duty military raffle
through some of the most beautiful desert vistas in the world. We had over 550 vehicles on the trail at one time on Saturday with additional SUV and ROUGH runs on Sunday morning. There was also a winching demo and training class held Sunday morning in the new training area. Overall we estimated 8000+ people visited the over 100 vendors at Safari headquarters during the three days and we had at least 5,000 in attendance for the raffle Saturday night.
Speaking of the famous TDS raffle, this year was outrageous as we had
$152,000 in prize packages, a special active duty only military raffle, an online early- registration raffle and 6 bucket raffles with one of the bucket raffle prize packages over $4000 in value. The raffle was started and finished in about two hours even with special guest speakers, like the executives from MOPAR, State Parks, special sponsors and a few really special vendors. The raffle was well executed, as one should expect. We have had 49 years to get it right.
A couple of fun facts….there were over 1,000 fish taco’s served, 800 hot dogs and brats, 2,928 empanada’s and an impossible to count number of breakfast burrito’s and coffee. We hope that
everyone had a great time. I know as the Registration Chair that I did get a lot of positive feedback and Tierra Del Sol is already working on our next event. 2012 will be the 50th
Desert Safari and we are
working on an event that will celebrate the great traditions of the club, entertain our guests and ultimately raise money so that we can continue the fight to keep our lands open for the
recreational sports that we all share and love so deeply. Once again our sincerest THANK YOU to all of you who attended….and for those of you who did not, please consider attending the 50th
. It
will be a party worth attending. For more information or to find out more about Tierra Del Sol and the Desert Safari please visit
www.tds4x4.com.
Happy Trails, Bob Alexander Registration Chair
34 S&S OFF ROAD MAGAZINE - MAY 2011 -
www.SS-OffRoadMagazine.com Desert Safari Public Relations
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