Downtown Ephrata lights up during parade
Miracle on Main Street parade attendees watch as parade floats go down Main Street in Ephrata on Saturday evening.
EPHRATA — “Mommy, mommy! Here comes Santa!” shouted Rhonda Kleyn’s two-year-old son.
She brought her family, including some nephews, to see Santa travel along Basin Street and C street on the back of a fire truck in the Miracle on Main Street parade, Ephrata’s annual holiday light show, Saturday evening.
“The show has sort of become a family tradition. My son wanted to see Santa Claus really bad,” said Kleyn, who is from Quincy.
She said her son had an added bonus this year: a snowball fight with his cousins.
“I think he’s having just as much fun playing in the snow as he is seeing Santa come down,” she said.
Ephrata received 0.48 inches of a snow/rain mixture that started early afternoon until late evening, according to the National Weather Service.
The near-zero temperatures did not deter Grant County residents from attending the light show.
First-time parade attendee Suzie Thompson said she tries to go to all of the holiday events.
“There’s not a lot of nightlife here, so when there’s something special going on, I try to get out and attend,” said Thompson, who went to a Christmas event in Soap Lake earlier during the day.
Thompson went to the parade with her friend, Helen Good, also of Soap Lake.
“Last year, it was just cold. And then, this year, it’s snowing,” said Good.
She said she had been attending the light show since it started, a few years ago.
“I like to see how creative the floats can get,” she said.
There were a total of nine float entries, said parade coordinator Jean Frazier.
A float contest was being held at Ephrata High School about an hour before the parade.
Float categories included first and second place for commercial and community floats. Floats were submitted by local businesses, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts.
Girl Scouts Service Unit 490 decorated their parade float entry by painting the Christmas tree and other Christmas-themed signs, both made out of wood on a lighted tractor.
A total of thirty-eight Girl Scouts from kindergarten to sixth grade took part in the parade.
When asked what Girl Scout Lynn Hurlburt’s, 9, favorite part of the parade was, she replied, “being able to sit on the float and throwing candy out.”
Haley O’Neel, 8, said she liked painting the float the most.
Girl Scout float organizer Sabrina Parsons said this was the second year the girls participated in the parade.
Kelly Moore also entered in the parade, using his large Newfoundland dog, Mack to pull a decorated cart turned into a sled with his five-year-old niece sitting in it.
His daughter, Sarah Moore remembered when she was the one being pulled in the sled.
“Our family is part of the parade each year; when I was younger I was the one being pulled by Mack. Now it’s my 5-year-old cousin’s turn,” she said.
Bred as a working dog for fishermen, Kelly Moore said the parade was a good way to “psychologically make Mack feel like he belongs by putting a sense of working purpose in him, like what he was bred to do.”
He said his family participates in the parade because it is a good way to be part of the Ephrata community.
“It’s a way for people to come together and enjoy downtown. The parade is a good thing for the community,” he said.