What fun things does your local community do?
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Us Girls..Our Views 
We have all the neat small town stuff. I like Kimball Days with games and food and street dance on Sat night. There’s a Farmer’s Market every Friday in town that has good food. I enjoy the business expo they have each year where all the business’s go to promote their stuff. I love the Swappers Meet that is each Sat. It’s like a flea market. The only thing Kimball doesn’t have which I wish they did was there is never a carnival of any kind. They always go to Annandale.
I second that, Joy!
We have an annual “__ days” festival, but I’ve never gone to it. I kinda got over all those street fairs at some point (maybe because I was a carny one summer in college). We have fireworks for big days. I am sure there are other things, but to be honest, I have not paid attention. Now that I have kids, maybe I will. But I tend to do more stuff with the regional adoption community, so I don’t have a lot of time for local stuff. Maybe if I had weekends off . . . .
When my parents moved us to Small Town USA, I loved the fact that the town did so many things as a community. Parades, Santa Shop, Easter egg hunt, pancake breakfasts, train depot festival, covered bridge festival, street fair, caroling, haunted house, etc. We just loved it. It’s a lot different from the city. So I thought it would be fun to see what other towns / cities offer and who participates in them.
We have Strawberry festival, Salsa festival, concerts on the 4th of July, a Sunday market. That is it, I think. I do not feel this town has that American Community sense. I would had love that, to be honest.
49er days. Actually the 49er days start today. They have a parade down mississippi street and a carnival at city hall, and they have fireworks everynight at common’s park.
We have Hardyville Days and the Corn Fest, but I prefer crossing the river to attend Laughlin’s Margarita Festival.
I’ve never been to a margarita festival but I’m sure game.
Well, our “big thing”, because of the name of our town, is our Independence Day Celebration. It goes on for three days, and there is a parade (of course), sometimes there’s a 5K, pancake breakfasts, concerts in our park, and, of course, fireworks over our river. It’s one of the bigger celebrations in the area, and we get a lot of people showing up. My only complaint is that the parade lasts TWO HOURS+!!! Even for a small-town lovin’ girl like me, that’s a bit long!
We also have a “Brew B Que” in the fall, which is a chili cook-off and beer tasting event – which, obviously, is directed more at the adults. There’s an Easter Egg Hunt in early spring, weather permitting, and they have a Santa’s Workshop for the kids a couple weeks before Christmas, which I just love. Local crafters set up, and everything costs $5 or less. Adults and older kids (middle school and high school) to escort children through so they can buy gifts for their parents, and they have wrappers on hand to wrap the gifts for the kids. It’s all free, except for the actual purchases, and we absolutely love it for the kids. We also have a pretty thriving Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, the raceway (dirt track) runs races nearly every weekend, and we’re the county seat, so we also host the County Fair in August.
Nearby – within an hour’s drive – we have a historic village which hosts a Celtic Festival every year, another which holds several German-themed functions, Amish settlements (real ones… excellent baked and leather goods) a place that does a HUGE corn maze (which is wicked fun), minor league baseball teams (good games, cheap admission and food, and VERY kid-friendly), and quite a few small and large festivals, farmers’ markets, etc.
Finally, depending upon the route, we occasionally host RAGBRAI (http://ragbrai.com/), which is a huge bike-trek which goes from the western border of Iowa to the eastern. It’s not a race, and anywhere from 10-20,000 biker riders participate every year. Two years ago, our town hosted, and Lance Armstrong was participating. The whole town was all a-twitter at the prospect of a celebrity visiting! (he did, and all reports say that he was very, very nice) It was pretty cool, though… there was a very neighborly attitude, and everyone turned out their best to welcome this onslaught of guests for the night.
That Santa’s workshop thing sounds really neat. I like the idea of that. Kids like to get their own gifts.
During the summer, they have a fishing clinic for the kids. Bailey usually does it every year, this year he had a tournament so he missed it. Then they have the carnival, fireworks, Buffalo Days, parade, all that fun summery stuff.
During Christmas, the train that comes through our town, decorates the train cars with lights, and Santa comes. That’s always neat! We have a small farmers market down town, and a craft show comes I believe once during the year. I actually have never been to that, so I am not sure when it is. I think that is it, that I know of.