2018 Egg Festival Olympic Themed
MENTONE — The planners of Mentone’s annual Egg Festival are hoping for gold medal weather in order to ensure a successful event and with a theme of “The Olympics,” silver or bronze just won’t do.
“The big thing of course is weather,” said Rita Simpson, Chamber of Commerce president and head of the festival planning committee. “Good weather means a good festival.”
Simpson said good planning has ensured that there will be empty spaces during the three-day event. “All of our booth space is pretty much full, all of our food vendors are full, the downtown area is pretty much set up,” she said. “Everybody does their job, that’s the beauty of it. Everybody has a job to do and they all have their individual jobs.”
The festival will run from May 31 to June 2 and kicks off on Thursday, May 31 with flea markets and food vendors at 5 p.m., followed by a performance by The Bulldogs at 7:30 p.m. at the fire station.
On Friday, the festival will feature the 24th Annual Car, Truck, Tractor and Motorcycle show.
“We have the car show and that’s probably the biggest event in terms of crowd size,” said Simpson. “We normally run about 140 cars, trucks and motorcycles, as many as we can take.”
Saturday begins with a pancake and sausage breakfast at the fire station from 6 to 10 a.m, followed by the Egg City 5K run at 8 a.m.
The 3-on-3 basketball tournament with Bill and Chad Patrick will be held at the Mentone Gym and begins at 9 a.m. Registration for the corn-hole tournament begins at 10 a.m., followed by the annual parade at 11 a.m. This year’s theme is “The Olympics.” The barbecue contest starts at noon along with the garden tractor pull. At 12:30 p.m., one of the Egg Festival signature events, Miss Chick and Mr. Rooster contest, will commence on the festival stage. The kiddie tractor pull begins at 1:30 p.m., followed by the egg toss at 2:30 p.m. Judging for the barbecue contest is scheduled for 5:30 p.m., followed by a performance by the Sentimental Journey Band at the fire station. Winners of the cute baby contest will be crowned at 7:30 p.m. as well as the crowning of Miss Mentone.
On Saturday, several of the festivals long-time staple events are joined by some new features, such as a barbecue contest and a photographic display called “Living Pictures.”
“The living pictures is something new and that’s like history of the Mentone community and we do that on Saturday night,” said Simpson.