By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Pumpkinfest has gone virtual this year with the hope of inviting everyone back next year for the fall festival’s 25th anniversary.
Pony Express Museum Executive Director Cindy Daffron says the steering committee held off on a decision as long as possible, then relented and canceled the celebration.
Instead, it will go virtual featuring a virtual costume photo contest.
“We thought, you know, give something back to the kids. We feel like we’re dedicated to family and to children,” Daffron tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “So, we said the Pony Express is going to ride on, no matter what.”
A carving contest is also being held.
Organizers decided that if they couldn’t hold the festival at the Pony Express Museum and allow people to view the Pumpkin Mountain, they would provide a “behind the scenes” video on how Pumpkinfest got started and how all those pumpkins get carved and put on display.
A lot of suggestions were rejected.
“We even said, let’s just build a mountain and let the people look at it and then they’re like, oh no, then we’ll have a traffic jam in the city and we thought how can we even make it a drive by,” according to Daffron. “There’s no good way on those streets down there to make it be a drive by like you could drive through the park or something.”
Pumpkinfest 2020 is using the KQ2.com – Contest Page to upload photos by ages. The contest runs through October 6th. Winners will be announced on the 9th.
For the pumpkin carving contest, use NewPressNOW.com/contests to submit a photo of your carved pumpkin. That contest runs from October 9th through the 25th.
Daffron says the virtual presentation this year should provide a bridge to a milestone next year.
“It’s 25 years of an event that, you know, when they first started it, did they think it would last 25 years? They weren’t sure.”
And Daffron adds this pandemic will pass, some day.
“But just remember, there’s a time coming when we’re going to all get to enjoy something together again and that’s what we’re hoping for.”