The Great Day in Elk 2010 will be history in two days, but since it's pretty much consumed my focus for the past couple of weeks, I'm still going to write about it. The Great Day has been going on for over 30 years, a wonderful community event in the town of Elk, that brings together the local community and visitors for a day of fun, food and camaraderie. The day starts with a parade at noon - kids, fire trucks, the occasional horse and all sorts of local wit and creativity in the form of floats and themes. After the parade everyone convenes on the grounds of the Community Center and eats, drinks and makes merry.
There are kids games and crafts, a water melon eating contest, some sack races and most famous of all the greased pole with money attached at various intervals up the pole. Generally this provides day long entertainment. There's also a silent auction, a cake auction, palm and tarot readers, and massage available for $1 per minute.
Food is available in abundance - Moroccan lentil soup, fresh baked bread from the Vincent Carleton bread oven, felafels, lots of tasty sweets from the Sugar Shack and, of course, the world famous margaritas. There's also fresh pressed apple juice and starting at 4pm dinner of a choice of tri-tip, salmon or portabella mushrooms.
Every year this event requires a lot of organizing; the board of the Community Center meets once per month and starting at least in May the entire meetings concern the Great Day - who is doing what, what needs to be updated, how can it be made even better. The last weeks are a scramble getting enough volunteers to staff the various events and organize the different aspects - someone to handle the vendors, someone to organize the games, someone to do the lunch and the dinner and so on. And then there's the shopping. Lots of things can be ordered from local businesses (thank you Coastline and Thanksgiving Coffee to name but two - and the Elk Store for accepting and holding those deliveries!) but one day is devoted to shopping the big box stores in Santa Rosa for everything from replacement cookware to mustard for the hot dogs. And this year (and last year) I was the designated shopper - both times accompanied by very wonderful volunteers who made the shopping much easier than it otherwise would have been. It's amazing to see a pickup truck loaded with supplies - you start the day thinking you'll never really fill it up and then you do.
I hope to see lots of you at the Great Day!