Sequoia Forest Update

Update for Sequoia Forest, 2012

Southern Sierra areas include - Sequoia National Forest, Kern River Canyon, Kernville, Tehachapi, Kennedy Meadows, Golden Trout, Domeland, Western Divide, Giant Sequoia National Monument.
Further north, there is a small chunk of National Forest land smack dab in between Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, some of the best, free Sequoia car camping anywhere.

new: USDA National Forest waterproof map, updated and printed in late 2011. The Wilderness areas of the Southern Sierra Nevada, known as SEQUOIA, has renamed their ranger districts too.

Kern river & Sequoia ranger offices

• What was once Greenhorn Ranger District is now called Kern River Ranger District - one office in Kernville and one office on Lake Isabella. 
• Sequoia Hot Springs Ranger District in California Hot Springs is gone and a new Western Divide Ranger District is located in Springville, CA. Giant Sequoia is part of the Western Divide Highway, up near Ponderosa, CA
• West of Kings Canyon NP,  Hume Lake Ranger District remains the same.
• Cannel Meadows/Troy Meadows Ranger District, near Kennedy Meadows, may be a seasonal gig - if it exists at all.

find out more secluded Sequoia Camping options

• SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST
• SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK
• SEQUOIA MAPS
• SEQUOIA CAMPGROUNDS
• SEQUOIA BACK ROADS
• KERN RIVER
• KERN CANYON
• MONACHE MEADOWS
• KENNEDY MEADOWS
• DOMELANDS WILDERNESS
• GOLDEN TROUT WILDERNESS

Marketing a Hotel

As independent innkeepers, marketing hotel property online and off line is now equally important. Gone are the days when you could run a small advertisement in the local newspaper and hope travelers see it. Now a full menu of advertising campaigns is necessary to even survive. A professional looking web site about your lodge with great photos, a map and current room rates, is a must in todays competitive market.


hotel advertisement


ON LINE - First you need to understand your cyber market, the folks that are surfing the web looking for a place to stay next weekend. Most are on the web daily, many for well over a decade and they expect web site to work properly. Amazing looking photographs to illustrate just how unique your property is just the start. They expect all links, emails, forms or PDF downloads to work correctly, all seasonal pages to be updated four times per year, and they expect to be able to gather recreation and tourist information on your local California region. So your web site best be up to date, always.


Online marketing is another step, after your web site is updated and ready to get some attention. Title tags, different on every single page is the best way to establish organic search results. When you want to get more exposure, you could contact local travel-related businesses and ask to trade links. They can provide your lodge with a free listing and a link, and you find a spot on your web site for their service. Many create 'links' or resource pages on their web site, just for this purpose.


Next step is to reach out to busy web sites that have serious, established web traffic. 


The State of California Tourism site allows for content submissions and business listings, but they could cost you a pretty penny. Lodging association web sites are highly overrated and minimal tourists actually use those sites. Hotel and popular travel sites like TripAdvisor, Travelocity, Expedia, HotWire can be good places to list your property, but be warned of commission structure and fees.
  
Learn to cater to your regional market, as well as the world traveler. Find local travel sites, county recreation sites, Chamber of Commerce web sites. Get listed on their web site by providing them with a link first, and them contacting them directly.

hospitality marketing

Get annual listings with link on Total Escape!

Total Escape has been 'on the web' promoting the outdoors and back road destinations in California for over 15 years, and we have the local content and the repeat traffic to keep on top of the game. California Lodging is the second most visited page on the site, and your inn might already be listed. We offer annual ads for California hotels, budget motels, hostels, mountain lodges, cabin rentals and vacation homes, all at dirt cheap rates!

Benchmark Maps

Benchmark Maps are the best, full state, full featured, road map for exploring the Western US. DanaMite, founder of Total Escape, has been using hers since 2000, and has always found a place to camp, on any dirt road, even in the wee hours of the night. Imagine waking up the next morning, with stunning scenery all around, cuz you went the distance.

since this atlas is such a popular title, Total Escape now carries it on the map store

Benchmark Atlases for the Western United States

• CALIFORNIA
• ARIZONA
• NEW MEXICO
• NEVADA
• UTAH
• WASHINGTON
• OREGON

climatechange

The masses still prefer prime time television and spoon fed news, over the web (www).  Many wish to deny reality and create fantasy, and we are in their clutches. Control and greed go hand and hand, along with profits. Corporations have run us ragged for 50 years. THEY have made us dependent fools, consumers for their worldly game. Manipulate, associate, master-bate, educate and spread the truth, followed with science. Our planet needs us to care for her, sooner than later.

Global warming is happening, we now need a meeting of the minds.

Denial is no longer an option.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/

cheap footwear = cancer

Holy flippin moly. My footwear could give me cancer.

Sunday, gorgeous weather, Autumn has arrived, and a laundry kinda afternoon. Not your typical weekend, but who's watching. Chores, yuk. I was hanging my clothes up today and just started thinking about ALL of these plastic hangers I use. 

Then it dawned on me that half the stuff in my home is plastic, or some processed chemical wood product. I've heard that some plastics cause cancer, but I never bothered to verify it or look it up. Cancer rates seem epidemic  of recent - but only a few bother to find out the scientific truth. 

Is plastic really that bad? it appears so.

My bare feet walking, sitting, sweating in these closed-cell foam sport sandal could very well be soaking toxic in the bottom of me feet.  My ultra sticky yoga mat is made from what?

Check out the numbers on Ecology Center. information is free

http://www.ecologycenter.org/factsheets/plastichealtheffects.html