BLYN — Organizers of the 123rd Sequim Irrigation Festival revealed this year’s float to the festival’s royalty at the annual Kick-Off Dinner at 7 Cedars Casino.
The float, displayed at the Saturday dinner, features Sequim’s welcome sign with an elk head that moves up and down, a grain elevator and blossoming cherry trees.
Guy Horton designed the float for the 11th time in 14 years, he said, with help from Jay Lounsberry.
“It’s so many different things to so many different people that it’s as if someone comes to town, it’s the things you would show them,” Horton said.
A major component of the float came from the hands of his “Blossom Brigade” of Lynn Horton, Robin Bookter, Whitley Sakas, Michelle Ostroot, Corrine Horton and Madelyn Schroeder, who started in October making 16,000 flowers split between the two cherry trees.
Horton said he plans to add more elements in time for the royalty’s first parades, including The Daffodil Parade in Tacoma on April 7 followed by the Sequim Irrigation Festival from May 4-13 with the Grand Parade on May 12.
This year’s royalty includes Queen Erin Gordon and Princesses Eden Batson, Gracelyn Hurdlow and Gabi Simonson. After Sequim’s festival, they’ll visit more than a dozen parades representing Sequim.
The festival’s other dignitaries include Grand Marshal Dave McInnis, Grand Pioneer Don Ellis and Wilma Rhodefer Johnson, and Honorary Pioneers Ross Hamilton and Lorelle Agostine.
For more information on this year’s festival, visit www.irrigationfestival.com.
This year’s Sequim Irrigation Festival’s royalty float features scale versions of the local grain elevator and Sequim welcome sign along with blossoming cherry trees with 8,000 individually made flowers for each tree. It will first drive in the Daffodil Parade on April 7 followed by the Sequim Irrigation Festival’s Grand Parade on May 12. (Matthew Nash/Olympic Peninsula News Group)
