There’s something for everyone at Chubbuck Days this weekend
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CHUBBUCK – Chubbuck’s biggest community event of the year is coming up and the city says it will offer the same fun it has for 63 years.
Chubbuck Days starts on Friday, Aug. 11 and continues on Saturday, Aug. 12. The first night’s festivities will include a viewing of “Ratatouille” at Stuart Park and the second day will include a parade through the heart of the city and a festival at Cotant Park.
“It’s good to have a time where you can just get together, forget all the challenges and just have a good time, and that’s the intent behind Chubbuck Days,” Chubbuck Mayor Kevin England said.
England said in the past, communities almost always held events for citizens, “to gather and to celebrate and those kinds of things are kind of going away. You don’t see it as much. You do see some but you don’t see it as much as you used to.”
“It’s something that Chubbuck has always done, and it’s something we’ve vested ourselves in,” England said.
The viewing of “Ratatouille” will begin at dusk, around 9 p.m. and will be free to the public. Under the dark evening sky, people will be able to view the movie on a large projector screen in the grass.
“We encourage everyone to come out early and play games or play in the splash pad before the movie,” said Wendy Butler, the mayor’s assistant, who’s been in charge of organizing Chubbuck Days for 18 years.
The parade will start the Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and Butler said there’s somewhere around 100 entries. It will start on Hawthorne Road near the Allstate building and then turn left on West Chubbuck Road and then end at Independence Avenue. The floats will either keep going and exit or turn on Independence towards Cotant Park.
Butler said people should watch their children closely at the parade and not let them run into the road. People in the parade are instructed not to throw candy in the street.
“We hear people tell us all the time it’s the best parade around,” Butler said.
The festival will then begin at 11 a.m. directly after the parade and go until 3 p.m. Butler said that the mood of the festival is like, “a big block party.”
“People just wander around with their kids and they run through the park and visit and it’s just a great time for people to come together,” she said.
Butler said people at the festival might learn about new businesses in the community that they haven’t heard about before. There will be nearly 60 vendors with tables at the Chubbuck Days festival, all there to offer fun for the community and show them more about their businesses.
The businesses that will be at the festival for the first time will be Aiding 2 Adoption Rescue, Bankers Life, Dance Factory, Extreme Rush, Modi’s Freeze Dried Treats, Moosen Around Laser and Craft, Wright Physical Therapy, The Physical Therapy Specialists of Idaho, Triton Wellness Solutions & SoftWave Therapy, The Human Bean, Smiley Rileys Gourmet Cookies and Zac Davis Silvercreek Realty Group.
EastIdahoNews.com will also be at Chubbuck Days, doing a ping pong ball drop from the news helicopter. The balls can be redeemed for prizes at the EastIdahoNews.com booth at noon.
England said the city tries to have a broad range of vendors and activities at the festivities to meet many different interests.
“Come and see what happens here and you’ll find your place,” England said. “You’ll find some place to fit in.”