Plains Day doesn't let Mother Nature rain on the paradee

Matt Unrau

Melissa Oyer

Valley Press

Plains Day officially kicked off bright and early with the 5K Run at 9 a.m. on Saturday.

The course started at Plains High School, ran down McGowan Street to Highway 28, then up Hillview Road to P-Hill and then back down to the school again finishing out the five kilometers.

Dennis Brands from Missoula was the big winner for the day finishing at an impressive clip of 17 minutes and 9.75 seconds. Michelle Yoshinaga, from Clinton, Montana was the first woman to cross the finish line at 26 minutes and 13 seconds.

The first highschooler to come across the line was Plains own Carter Montgomery, who just finished up his freshman year of school.

Last week he finished in twelfth place in the state 2-mile race for track. Carter finished in 19 minutes and 32 seconds.

Tony Banovich coordinated the race, but left enough gas in the tank to come in third overall.

Besides the male and female winner living outside of Sanders County there were several other racers that came from far away places, including racers from Big Fork, Kalispell and even as far as Colorado and Illinois.

This isn’t surprising for Banovich as he says many people come into town to see friends and family and look for a chance to run somewhere.

“When runners get a chance to go somewhere new for a run they take advantage of it,” says Banovich. Also, as this race coincided with the Governor’s Cup race at Helena that features over 4,000 people, Banovich figures that people look for a more peaceful alternative.

“People are just looking for an alternative to the mayhem at Helena,” says Banovich. Unlike Helena’s race of thousands of racers, Plains day had 25 to 30 racers.

This included a small group of children from Paradise Elementary that undergo the Bluecross Governor’s Cup Training Program.

Jim LeClair, who is in charge of the program and brought the five children to the race, explains that the children start the program by running three minutes straight and work up to 21 minutes straight.

This 5K is the culminating activity for those in the program.

“It helps kids become more aerobic and develop good habits throughout summer,” says LeClair.

After the race at least one runner, Brands, was then able to head over to the Mason’s Breakfast at the VFW where he satisfied his empty stomach with a plate of pancakes and a slice of ham.

The breakfast ran from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and each plate of two pancakes and one slice of ham cost $5.

In true Plains Day fashion as soon as the breakfast was over several other activities began including the skatepark ribbon cutting ceremony.

At 11 a.m. the Gertrude Vacura Bryce Memorial Skateboard Park in E.L. Johnson Memorial Pool Park officially opened in grande fashion.

Donald Damschem, Secretary for CADA (Citizens Against Drugs Association) headed up the ceremony by telling the 35 to 40 people, skateboarders and bicyclists about the long journey it was for the community to reach this point.

He described the first meeting of CADA several years ago as the group of citizens met to “furious over the death of one of our children from drug use.”

During his speech they also unveiled the sign showing the name of the park and all the many donors. The sign, which was donated by The Printery lists 24 donors in total from the gold club to the silver and bronze club.

After Damschen talked, Millar Bryce got in front of the microphone to say a few words, expressing his happiness over the skate park and its ability to make Plains a better community.

Then Pastor John Curry said a prayer that doubled as a blessing for the park. This was followed by a ribbon cutting ceremony.

Damschen finished the ceremony by requesting the adults to continually spend time at the park, supervising the children and holding them accountable for the park.

After this point, several of the children at the park began to ride the jumps putting on a show and putting the park to good use immediately.

Paraders began lining up just before noon as raindrops began to fall.

But after a short misting, rain clouds made way for just a tiny breakthrough of sunlight as the Plains Day Parade kicked off on E. Railroad.

Floats, trucks, cars, horses, llamas, motorcycles and even motorized ice coolers could be seen making their way down the parade route tossing everything  from candyand paper mache flowers to newspapers and even a few hugs.

Over 30 entries were up for judging in this year’s parade.

Prizes were awarded for several categories.  Best Theme went to the Paradise Grade School.

Judges noted that the Plains Woman’s Club finished a close second in this category.

Alora Coke won for the Best Child entry as she rode through the parade on horseback.

Car enthusiast Dave Lopez won Best Original entry for his 1948 Classic Chevy car.  

Paraders then made their way to an ice cream social  at Rocky Mountain Bank followed by one of everyone’s favorite, the turtle races.

Thirty-tree turtles made their way across the finish line in six different heats.

The first place winner was 1-year-old Andrew  Wrobleski whose turtle “Ah” beat out the other top five finishers from each indvidual heats.

Wrobleski’s dad said they named the turle “Ah” because that was the only word the toddler could say.

Finishing second was Tanna Cole and third place went to Travis and Morgan Legard.

Throughout the day, Plains Day participants were tracking down notable public figures and people to know from the community.

Once an autograph was obtained from every person included in the book , it was turned in to organizers. A $100 Chamber script was awarded to Addy Gibson from Kalispell.

Gibson’s name was randomly drawn from all the books that were turned in.

Kathy Logan, Plains Day organizer said this year went off without a hitch, or at least without any major weather problems.

A cross-cut demo also took place in front of Block Mountain Stone. Several competitions were held including single buck won by John Myers,  women’s double won by Shannon Browning and Amy Resler, men’s double won by Randy Firestone adn Dustin Wagnon, and jack-and-jill won by Randy Firestone and Shannon Browning.   

“It was so much fun,” Logan said. “I am continually blessed by the community each year as people were supportive, even through a few nasty rain clouds.”

After speaking with Logan, she mentioned ashe was kicking around the idea of a western theme for next year’s event.