KMAS Radio

Well, we are here getting ready for Forest Festival weekend. It's May 29th through June 1st. Mason County Forest Festival dot com.

I'm with Amy Cooper right now. Amy, it's another great year. We can't wait.

It's going to be awesome. There are a lot of things going on, and I'm going to talk to all sorts of great folks here in this conversation. The first thing and we'll get into it more a little bit with Anna, but the carnival is two weekends.

It's this weekend, currently Memorial Day weekend. Yes. And then it's going to go dark a little bit midweek, and then it'll be back open for Thursday for the whole normal kind of time.

We see exactly. So we get a bonus weekend. They'll be open Friday through Monday of Memorial Day weekend and then back for us on Thursday for Forest Festival.

We have got a lot of fun events. And so starting things off on that Friday night, KMAS is doing another family fun night at the Civic Center parking lot. Tell us kind of what we're looking at here.

Yeah, we brought this event back last year and it was such a success. We're going to try and keep it going. And it's just like you said, family fun, free family fun.

We will have our royalty available for a little meet and greet. Our float will be there, which is super fun for the little kids to be able to actually stand on the floor and take some photos. We'll have lots of kids activities.

Of course, you're going to be playing some awesome music. We will have axe throwing as well. Our axe throwing trailer will be on site.

Nice. Ten dollars for ten throws. It's a lot of fun.

And then, of course, some food and all that good stuff. You know, what we're trying to do this year with this is to also talk more about the reason Forest Festival even started 81 years ago. Now tell tell everybody kind of the the I mean, how this all came about and why it's continued to be so strong.

Absolutely. So in addition to just celebrating our logging heritage, the focus of Forest Festival really is on wildfire prevention. It's so important.

And it's a you know, a topic that isn't ever going to go away. So we will at that Friday event have some representatives from our fire stations and DNR and, you know, be able to have those conversations Central Mason's actually bringing in like a training trailer that the kids can go through. As far as like a smoky house kind of scenario as well.

In addition to the wildfire conversations we can have with our other organizations that are coming. We'll have a bit of a touch a track aspect as well. We'll have some big log trucks and some other, you know, large vehicles for the kids to check out.

This has turned into a fun event for sure. And then Saturday is just a huge day. Starts off in the morning with the Goldsboro Creek run and walk and jog and whatever you want to do there.

That's always been a fun one. Lots of people enter into that. It's a seven miler and a three mile option as well, I think.

And so people can still look into that for that. Goldsboro Creek run. And then the firefighters pancake breakfast is always a good time.

That's at Central Mason. Yes. Yes.

So Central Mason on Franklin, they always have such a good spread. You know, their pancakes are amazing, but they also have, you know, like eggs, bacon, sausage, you know, a little extra as well. Just by donation.

It's a great fundraiser for them. And we encourage everyone to go support the firefighters before coming down and grabbing a spot on the parade route. Yeah, I'm going to talk to Robin about the parade.

And then Mick's doing a conversation with me about the logging show. But I do also want to mention and we'll mention this a few more times. Christmastown Kiwanis duck drop is changed.

It's not going to be on Sunday like it has been traditionally. It's going to be right at the conclusion of the logging show. Correct.

This should be really fun to watch. So historically, it's been a duck race on Goldsboro Creek. And due to some construction issues and things like that, they've pulled it out of the creek this year.

And we're dropping all the ducks from a big piece of equipment. And we're going to do it right there in Loop Field. And they've got some great prizes you can win.

It's a buck a duck. They will the Kiwanis will have a booth at the logging show where you can go buy a duck. And of course, if you know any Kiwanis representatives, you can buy your ducks now.

I was talking to Julie Rowan and she was as as we were talking, she was numbering each duck. I got to get through my six hundred and get the next Kiwanian to do theirs. That'll be really fun.

Kind of similar to in aspects, I guess, to the Love Inc. golf balls from heaven kind of a thing where they're just going to drop it and see what happens there. Martha Reed Foundation doing the rock in the forest again.

That is on the Mountain View branch at our community credit union. Correct. And that leads us right up to the fireworks.

Yes, that's going to be another big show. Yeah, it's going to be an awesome show. Always a good time.

It starts at 10 o'clock for the fireworks. Rock in the forest. I'll go from four until the fireworks start.

Basically, if you're at rock in the forest, you get a great view of the fireworks. And that's all free. All free.

Yeah, yeah. There'll be a beer garden at rock in the forest and food trucks. Of course, they're also doing a cornhole tournament this year.

Oh, fun. Yeah. So just a day jam packed with activities.

You know, too, I like about all all the forest festival is that there is free aspects to just about everything. You know, you do have to get carnival passes and bands there, but you can at least come downtown and walk around and see the vendors and see the booths. And there is vendors that will be at the logging show.

Sunday is still the traditional Shelton car show off on Olympic Highway North between C and K streets. And, you know, if the weather holds like we hope it will, that gets packed. Yeah, absolutely.

It's easily over 400 cars on a good on a good weather weekend. Yeah, we are crossing our fingers for them. It's going to be amazing.

And we just, you know, can't wait to see uptown Shelton filled as much as downtown Shelton is on Saturday. Why do you keep doing all this forest festival stuff? Why wouldn't you? I mean, I know why you love it. You love the community.

But tell me, I mean, it's it's a lot of work you guys put into this, but it really shows off our community. Absolutely. In fact, we had a couple new volunteers join us this year.

And, you know, one thing that they kept saying over and over again was, wow. We had no idea how much work actually goes into this event. It's huge.

But we are a great group of volunteers who love this community. And, you know, for me, we've chosen to run our business here and raise our family here. And it's just really important to us to help facilitate these community events and keep them going and keep that pride happening, you know, for our youth.

We're here at Cooper Studios, where you just wrapped up taking the photos of the royalty court. And they are super excited for this. They've been at a couple of parades already.

I think last weekend they were at a parade and got an award for the great float. So I'm looking forward to seeing that at the family fun night and during the parade. Plus, why don't you give a shout out to one of your most favorite junior royalty? My own daughter, Caroline, is on junior royalty this year.

She was on it last year, too. Our junior royalty kids, again, we brought that back last year to really kind of facilitate getting the younger kids to start thinking about being on royalty and their juniors and seniors. So it's for sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

They have a fantastic time. They get to ride on the float during the parade. They get to come help with the events on Friday night as well.

And, you know, just a moment for them to feel special. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I'm going to talk with Robin and with Mick and more as we get closer and closer to Forest Festival weekend.

But thank you for the time, Amy. Thank you. Continuing on this conversation about Forest Festival weekend with the parade coordinator.

Is that what you do? Parade chair. Parade chair, Robin Redman. It's always good to talk with you.

And you've been doing this as long as I can remember, too, on this great tradition. Mason County Forest Festival, the Paul Bunyan Grand Parade is just it's just wonderful. And every year it seems to get bigger and better.

Talk to me now. I know there may you know, you never know who's going to sneak in. But what do you have for numbers right now? We are we're sitting right around 80 entries.

So we got two horse groups so far. I think three car groups, a lot of community nonprofits, both motorized and then the walkers. Yeah.

So a lot of different groups. And I'm really excited. We have some new ones that I've never seen.

So I'm very excited. Oh, my gosh, this is I love it. Yeah, I'm excited.

Marching bands. We have a lot of bands. Yes.

Shelton will be leading the parade this year. And then they are looping back around and going to join up with the rest of the Shelton bands. Pioneer has a band.

So that like all like an all city band kind of a thing. Yep. Oh, my gosh.

All Shelton bands. I love it. So it's I'm very excited.

So they're going to you'll see the Shelton high school band go through twice. So I'm going to be with the younger kids as well. And then sorry to interrupt you, but you said North Mason Hawkins.

Yep. North Mason and Hawkins and Pioneer. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. I love bands. That just makes it just makes a parade so much more exciting.

You know, you've got those traditional memories of, you know, maybe watching the Rose Parade or Seafair Parade or Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, things like this. And the band's just elevated. It's so fun to hear.

I'm starting to come down the street. Yeah, everybody loves a good band. Oh, my gosh.

That's awesome. You guys as a committee also give out awards to these groups, motorized and non motorized. What are some of those categories? We have the festival floats.

I'll get there in their own little group. And then there's a commercial car club, the equestrian and then community motorized and community non motorized. I'll have all the different groups.

Our forest festival float has been already out and about these last couple of weekends. They've been out visiting places. And that's another great thing to see people come in from outside, you know, fathoms of fun or McCleary and things like that.

How many of those folks? Seven. What? Seven visiting festivals this year. I love it.

That's awesome. So rhododendron, Jefferson County, rhododendron. Yeah.

Marysville Strawberry. Fathoms of fun. Thinking of these off the top of my head.

Well, you're doing a great job. The May Day for Southside. OK, they're they're coming over.

There's I can't remember the last one now. Well, we'll be surprised when we see it then. The parade route as normal, it will go down railroad.

It starts at seventh and railroad comes down, makes the corner there at First Street. Is that right? Yes. And then right back up Franklin on the other side.

Yep. And KMAS and Mason Web TV will be broadcasting in for folks who can't make it down or around the world. And I don't know if I've told you this before, but we get viewers all over the country are watching the parade.

Amazing. They so excited. I you know, I remember people from Texas.

You know, they'll they'll have moved away or they've got friends or family. And they're like, well, we're watching from Texas. We're watching from Georgia.

People watch it. They're on a plane or something. They're watching it as their own.

I actually go back and watch it because I don't get to see it. Right, right. You're too busy.

I'm ushering everybody out. I mean, I get to see all of the entries, but I don't get to actually see them coming down the street and experience that. So I mean, I do go back and watch it, too.

You put in so much hard work and effort into getting this thing all lined up. And, you know, as with anything, it's hard because once the parade starts, it's going, it's going. Yep.

We there's no stopping it. How long have you been doing this? I want to say this is my ninth year. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. It's so great. I had a great teacher.

Judy was a great teacher. Uh huh. She did the parade before me.

It was it's always a lot of fun. And the judges have a real hard decisions in all those categories. Yeah.

And so the grand parade is at eleven. People start gathering. They start bringing their stuff down.

I don't know, nine, ten, thirty. Watch some of the runners from Goldsboro Creek run. Yeah.

And then usually before that, there's things that are going on. You have vendors kind of walking up and down. The Kiwanis are selling their ducks and all that good stuff.

Should be a great day. And we're going to pray for sunshine. Yeah.

No. Fingers crossed on that one. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. Wrapping up this great conversation about all things Forest Festival here with Mick Sprouffske. Mick, how are you? Doing great.

How are you? I'm good. It's good to see you. We have got the logging show again at Loopfield.

It's Saturday at one. And these are always great things to come and watch. Yes, it is.

Tell me a little bit about the events and what's happening this year. Well, new this year, we're doing the Pacific Northwest Springboard Chop, the Pacific Northwest Championship Hotsaw, and then the Pacific Northwest Championship Women's Single Buck Competition. OK, so let's go through these one at a time.

I'm going to try to describe what they are and you're going to correct me because I'll probably get them wrong. The springboard, that's the one where the competitors will notch into a log and then stick the balance beam in there. They'll put that in, jump up and move up the log like that.

Is that right? Oh, yeah. I've watched these. I've watched a few of these.

I love these. They'll set the springboard and chop it a notch for the next springboard. Then they get up on that last one and start chopping.

The chopping event really begins. Yeah, yeah. And so then the hot saw, that's where you have like the souped up chainsaws.

They almost got like jet engines on them and they rip the cord and they go as quick as they can. Is that right? Correct. It's a down cut and then an up cut.

How do people, how do people, are these saws that these competitors have been tweaking and working on? Do they get them from a factory? How do they get these things so dialed in? Good question. I think some of them are probably it's a term like motor heads themselves and tweak them themselves. But they're, you know, they're two stroke, usually snowmobile engines.

Yeah. And so there are shops that do this. And I know there's there's a gentleman that comes up out of out of the harbor, out of Hoquiam, I believe, that helps tune the saws a day of the, at least for some of the competitors.

So, you know, I don't know if he gives somebody a certain edge or what. Wow. A lot of it's the saw, but it's also that's the beginning part of it.

It has to start and run and then it's technique. And yeah, it is a lot of technique because, you know, you got to make sure your cuts are straight. Any sort of wobble at all that impacts your speed and your time and even, I guess, how the teeth on the blade rip through the wood and stuff like that.

Correct. If they sometimes they've, you know, they've I know the competitors of complaint complained that the wood was too rough. You know, they just didn't match the chain to the wood.

How do you know? Yeah. How do you know? But with this, everybody's on an even keel as far as the woods concerned. Our Brandon Sergay from Olympic Lumberjack Productions sources all the wood himself.

I know he traveled as far as Spokane to get some of the pine. And I don't remember. I believe that was for the one of the sawing competitions.

And so for each for those competitions, all the men's competitions will be out of the same chunk of log with women's. That way, nobody can say they had an unfair advantage. Sure.

Wow. And so what's the final event? You were saying there's a women's the single buck. So what's that one? So that's the the women's single buck is the crosscut saw.

OK, so there's they're on their own. Yeah. So that's a speed event.

I'll tell you. Let me also tell you a story. So we many, many years ago, my family had a family reunion down in California and on our old family property there, we had not the single, but it was the two person.

There was a couple of two person saws that were still there, you know, old homestead or something like that. So that was one of the competitions that we would do as a family is go back and forth and gosh, it just wears you out. That's learn the teamwork there because.

Yeah. It takes both of you to make that work. Oh, my God.

It was so much fun. And you know what's great about these events? Obviously, there is deep rooted history in Mason County and logging. And the forest festival.

But you see these competitions in different aspects, different companies, you know, they'll put these on. But you see them like on ESPN, too, and things like that. And.

If I'm flipping and I see that, I'm watching it because it is just it's exciting, it's high energy, and there's just something about it, I guess, maybe maybe the hard work that these folks are putting in. But it is something to watch. It is.

It is. It's and I'm the same way. I love sitting there watching that.

It's fun to see some of the athletes that have come through here. Yeah. So, yeah, we have.

Well, let me cover another thing that we have this year. You saw a little bit of it last year, and that was the obstacle pole that we put out over the pond. Yeah.

Well, this year, we're not going to have the pond, which I know, you know, that is a crowd favorite. But just changing things up a little bit, we're going to have two obstacle poles set up, and those are on. They're going to be on separate logs.

So and they're going to be a longer, a little bit stiffer log that will be suspended over. But one third will be suspended out past it. So the competitors have to they start at the end, that's going to get cut off the suspended out and they run around and then they race up the end of the log.

They have to cut the end off and come back down without falling off. Oh, wow. So and then that's I believe that's when their time time is stopped.

That's going to be a fun one. That is going to be a real fun one. It's a real festive atmosphere down there, so it's just as the parade is concluding.

I talked with Robin and she said there's about 80 entries in the parade. So 11 goes to about 1230. I think this kicks off around one o'clock or so.

Correct. There'll be vendors and booths and information, food trucks and all the like kind of what we've seen in Loopfield. And the other thing about this is that it's all free.

Correct. Yes, it's it's family free fun. Uh huh.

You've been doing Forest Festival for a long time. Yes. Why? Why do you keep at it? I think it's multifaceted.

It's multifaceted. It's a lot of it's for the community. I, you know, just have a given back.

Yeah. When I came back to help out was to give back from the time, you know, those that gave to make it make it possible for me to be in Forest Festival in 1984. Yeah.

And then it just kind of grows on you. And you get to this time. Well, like two weeks ago, I was really, you know, you get a lot of stress and you start wondering why you're doing this.

But I'll tell you, on Saturday, May 31st. Yeah. When I start seeing smiling faces of the crowd, that's one.

That's the reward. You know, I asked Amy and I asked Robin the same questions. And then I also talked with the royalty court today.

So we're getting their photos here at Cooper's and. That was kind of the main answer. They the community, the kids, the smiles.

That's why that's why people keep coming back to help. You guys are small, but mighty when it comes to your volunteer force. You have a couple of new volunteers this year, which is awesome.

And, you know, every year on good weather weekends, which we're fingers crossed for. What do we think? Tens of thousands of people. Yes, I think so.

Yeah. Sometimes these parade when you're on the parade route, it's five, six deep all the way up and down railroad. And people just they just love it.

And then you go to I mean, all day Saturday, something's going on. You got the Goldsboro run, the pancake breakfast, the parade, the logging show, rock in the forest, now uptown to get you ready for the fireworks and then the car show on Sunday. Just people come from all over.

And it really is. 81 years. It's amazing.

It is. It is amazing. That's you think about that and how few things.

You know, have are the 81st annual. It just it's just got such deep roots. And it's just so, so exciting to be a part of it.

It is. And it's part of it also is sharing sharing the tradition with our families, too. Yeah.

Our individual families, my grandkids are most of them will be at the show. And I know they'll be at the parade. It's awesome.

Try to share the car show on Sunday with one of them. Well, we've got ourselves another big weekend. It's coming up May 29th through June 1st.

As I mentioned when I talked with Amy, you will see the carnival in town early for this Memorial Day weekend, just like last year. They're in town early for you to go down and enjoy through the weekend. They'll kind of be dark to clean things up for the middle part of next week.

And then Thursday of Forest Festival 29th, they'll be right back open all weekend long. So that'll be another great reason for you to come down and stay around for even longer in the community. Mick, it's always good to talk with you.

Likewise, I really appreciate this. Thank you. Thank all of our sponsors.

Oh, yeah. This is impossible without it's. In our city meeting earlier last week, you know, somebody had thanked us and I turned around and thanked them because without the teamwork.

Yeah. In a small community that we have, this wouldn't happen. You'll see signs around and you'll see it in the programs.

You'll see all the sponsors, whatever you can do to thank them, support them with their businesses, send them an email or a Facebook message or write them a note and just thank them for their continued support to make this such a what's such a wonderful weekend for so many people. Yes.

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