Record numbers attend Plains Day

Threatening clouds didn’t keep people away from a day full of exciting events at this year’s Plains Day.

Saturday started out with what attendees described as the best parade to date. Lots of candy ended up in the hands of eager children lined up along the parade route.

This year’s parade saw entries ranging from the old standby, Smokey the Bear to the mini front-end loader driven by Jack Hardman from XR Rentals. New this year, was a large float sponsored by the new pickleball organization that is building several courts at the pool-park.

This year’s parade had 84 float entries.

Town Council member and organizer for Plains Day Connie Foust commented that it was “the parade was the best ever.”

After the parade, Erike Carter, an employee with Rocky Mountain Bank and her daughter, Saydi Carter, handed out free ice cream courtesy of the bank.

This year, Plains saw a large increase in vendor participation with 49 booths of items for sale.

One vendor missing this year was the Pony Rides for the children. New this year were free tickets to the local Llano theatre during the day.

Food was not in short supply with VFW Post 3596 offering burgers and chips.

Free burgers and hotdogs were being served up at Wildhorse Trading Company in celebrations of their first-year anniversary in business. Servers Anita Marsh and Jason Cuddy handed out 200 burgers and almost 200 hotdogs. Owners Judy and Jason Sabatch said they wanted to give back to the community for having a successful first year.

Fred Young Park was busy with a bounce house and singers with the group Clark Fork Valley Singers based out of Thompson Falls. The vocalists were Jessy Lewis, Heath Gerig, Lisa Mickelson, Bev Czerwinski and Rob Viens.

Also at Fred Young Park, the Alliance Church sponsored the watermelon eating contest. Prizes were supplied by the Alliance Church that also included lots of paper towels to clean all the contestants up after the event.

Sharon Neilson was the organizer with Marianne Bell helping to keep the watermelon eaters supplied with melons to devour. The contestants were divided into four age groups four to five years old, six to seven years old, eight to nine years old, 10 to 11 years old. Each heat was timed and the most rinds left on the plate was the winner.

Overall winner was 10-year-old Moriah Champneys.

The adults couldn’t be left out of the mess with their own watermelon contest. No clear or clean winner came out of the try.

One of the last events of the day was a very well attended barbecue dinner, sponsored by the Ryan family who reside in Plains. This free barbecue was in its 17th year.

The patriarch of the family, Dan Ryan said, “I love to see people enjoy themselves and also promote dancing in the area.”

The dancing started with Dan Ryan singing the National Anthem. Neaman Ryan was the master of ceremony. Neaman, the son of Dan Ryan, is noted for being a nationally known dancer, actor, and director. He commented, “We enjoy creating an atmosphere for everyone to enjoy themselves.”

The last event, which required some very flexible contestants, was the limbo dance. All age groups were invited to participate with two separate groups consisting of tall people and short people. After many exciting attempts and failures, it came down to last year’s co-winner from Plains, Jubal Ryan and Plains resident, Justin Yoder.

Yoder took the top honors at a pole height of 23 1/2 inches and the $200 prize money, with Jubal Ryan taking second and Kora Henrude taking third place.