Annual Earth Day Trail Cleanup of the
Illinois Prairie Path & Great Western Trail

9:00 AM until approximately noon

Saturday, April 26, 2008 - No Rain Date

The Elmhurst Bicycle Club will once again take responsibility for cleaning up along a 1 mile section of the Great Western Trail between Schmale Road on the east and Gary Avenue on the west.

Since we started supporting this event, many EBC members have volunteered to help clean up the trail. It’s a great time to meet and greet some of your fellow EBC Members, and it’s a great feeling to be helping to keep our trails clean.

Please consider coming out to help us this year.

The staging area will be the parking lot of the DuPage County Farm Bureau Foundation located at the Northeast corner of Gary Avenue and St. Charles Road (south of the Great Western Trail).

On Saturday, April 26th, bring friends and family, sturdy gloves, and garbage bags to fill. (EBC will have some heavy duty bags but bring one of your own in case we run out.)

The cleanup will last until approximately noon.

If you want to ride your bike from Elmhurst to the Cleanup, see the ride schedule for details.

For further information on EBC participation in this event,
contact Steve Josephs at 630-235-9841



The following is the Friends of the Great Western Trails press release giving credit and acknowledgement to the EBC for the participation in many trail cleanups.

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 24, 2008

The Elmhurst Bicycle Club continues to help with an important community cleanup project.

On Saturday, April 26th (rain or shine) from 9:00 AM to approximately 12 noon, the section of the Great Western Trail from Schmale to Gary Ave. in the Village of Carol Stream, IL. will be cleaned again and for more than 10 years in a row by members of the Elmhurst Bicycle Club.

“This is the annual Earth Day cleanup and we really appreciate the commitment undertaken every year by the members of the Elmhurst Bicycle Club, their families and friends to clean such a large section of the Great Western Trail. The EBC has been working on keeping this long stretch of the GWT clean since we started coordinating the cleanups in 1990s. To get the trail clean in just a few hours the participation of others from the surrounding communities is also very important. This annual “spring cleaning” is appreciated year around by trail users and the Friends of the Great Western Trails.” stated Don Kirchenberg volunteer Chairman of the Friends of the Great Western Trails.

Additional volunteers will be needed and they are encouraged to join with the members of the Elmhurst Bicycle Club along this section of the GWT in Carol Stream, IL between Schmale and Gary Ave. We always need and welcome additional volunteers to help us clean the trails. If you just want to help cleanup - head out to the trails that day and carefully pickup litter along the trail. Take your filled garbage bags to the nearest trash container.

It is recommended that all volunteers wear gloves, long sleeve shirts and long pants to help eliminate scrapes and cuts from thorny bushes or sharp objects left as trash along the trails. Those with wagons or two wheel carts to help carry the filled garbage bags are asked to bring them along too.

For more information about the trails cleanup contact Don Kirchenberg at email address: frndsgrtwstntrl_at_aol_dot_com. Also feel free to include in any news articles the webpage for the Friends of the Great Western Trails at the following webpage address: http://hometown.aol.com/frndsgrtwstntrl/myhomepage/business.html.

For press contact feel free to contact Don Kirchenberg at (630)853-7650 or email address: frndsgrtwstntrl_at_aol_dot_com.

For maps of the two GWT sections: Kane & DeKalb Counties trail section can be found here: http://www.co.kane.il.us/Forest/gwtrail.htm. The DuPage section of the GWT can be found here http://www.ipp.org/images/bwippmap.gif along with maps to the IPP and Fox River Trail.