Summerfest has all the ingredients for success
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune A passenger on the Allred family float gets ready to hand out some chocolate milk.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Some Royal City Summerfest participants preferred an old-fashioned ride.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune The car show during the Royal City Summerfest drew a selection of classic muscle cars and antique rides.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Horses and their owners danced it off in the arena, to the music of a mariachi band, during Royal City Summerfest Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune The Seattle Cossacks precision motorcycle team put on a show during the Royal City Summerfest parade.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Chief for a Day Brian Carmona (left) and Royal City Police Chief Daran Smith wave to the crowd during the parade.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Horse and rider dance down the street.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Cheer camp participants cheer on the Royal High School Knights during the Royal City Summerfest parade.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Royal City soccer players wave to the crowd.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune A master roper shows his skills during Saturday's Royal City Summerfest parade.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Some Royal City Summerfest parade participants decked themselves out in red, white and blue.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Royal City Summerfest parade participants throw a little candy to the crowd.
Cheryl Schweizer/Sun Tribune Cheer camp participants cheer on the Royal High School Knights.
By CHERYL SCHWEIZER
For The Sun Tribune
ROYAL CITY — There’s a recipe for a successful town celebration, and Royal City Summerfest had most of the proper ingredients over the weekend.
Good weather helps, and Summerfest benefited from sunny skies and moderate temperatures. It helps to have a lot of interesting events, and Summerfest had those too. The car show attracted some sweet rides – muscle cars, convertibles, sports cars, Atomic Era trucks. Summerfest provided a venue for dancing horses and their riders to show off their moves. The horses and riders performed to the music of a mariachi band.
And that was only the beginning. Summerfest featured lots of music, including a performance by country singer James Wesley Friday night.
A successful town celebration includes food, and Summerfest featured free breakfast in the park in the morning and barbecue tacos in the park during the afternoon.
Summerfest included a quilt show; Cindi Small Lucas took home first prize with her quilt depicting a bookcase at Hogwarts. Summerfest had a horseshoe contest, a golf tournament on Saturday and a fun run on Friday. The golf tournament finishes after dark and the fun run starts at dusk. There were lots of vendors in the park Saturday, and lots of activities like a seed-spitting contest and a pingpong ball drop Saturday afternoon.
A successful celebration is better with a big parade, and the Summerfest parade featured grand marshal Maria Allred driving the family tractor, while her husband Wiley rode in the cart as their grandchildren and family members handed out chocolate milk. The parade also included the classes of 1969 and 1979, soccer teams, rodeo queens, Royal High School cheerleaders, fire trucks and a vaquero (cowboy) doing rope tricks.
The Cossacks precision motorcycle team from Seattle zoomed down Main Street – their bikes, as a spectator noted, are antiques – and presented a special show Saturday afternoon. The Cossacks parked their bikes and let curious kids take a look (although there was one little girl who was not interested in getting on the bike for a picture, even when Mom said she’d be right there).
The day ended with live music in the park.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columibabasinherald.com.