A Waverly staple for the past 60 years is back in full swing this weekend.
The annual Waverly Old Fashioned Picnic begins Thursday and will run through Saturday. Activities on the main stage include the Miss Waverly pageant on Thursday evening, The Devon Clemons Band Friday night, and White Lightning Saturday night, all of which start at 7PM.
Stu Good says some new and returning activities are at this year’s picnic: “We are bringing back a couple of things we did in the past. We are bringing back a dunk tank this year. That hasn’t been there for the last several years. We’re bringing back the teen dance this year. It hasn’t been there since before Covid. Obviously Covid kind of wrinkle on a lot of different things that we had in the past. We are trying to bring a lot of that back now that we are getting acclimated again without the Covid issues. One thing that’s different is we won’t have a standard carnival this year. We’re bringing in a company called 25/8 Extreme out of Arthur, Illinois. Instead of your normal Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and so on, we’re going to have 25/8 to bring a zipline, a rock wall, and a bunch of different obstacle courses, 3-in-1 sports games, and we’ll have bounce houses for the smaller kids and so on. It’s a little different on the carnival side, which people aren’t quite used to yet. Hopefully it’s going to turn out good. We’ll see how it plays out.”
Other activities include craft, artisan, and food vendors daily; the American Legion Fish Fry on Friday; and washers, 3-on-3 basketball, and cornhole tournaments all taking place on Saturday.
For more information or a look at the complete schedule, visit the Waverly Old Fashioned Picnic’s Facebook page.