Cariboo Challenge Family Fun Night is racing full speed toward an evening of enjoyment.
It all happens Jan. 9 from 5 to 9 p.m. on Birch Avenue in 100 Mile House.
While the 2015 Cariboo Challenge Jack Gawthorn Memorial Sled Dog Race slated for the weekend has been cancelled due to lack of snow, this fun-filled family event will carry on as planned.
Co-organizer Lucille Armstrong says the event was created by Cariboo Challenge Sled Dog Society to kick off sled dog races, but it was always first and foremost about the event’s “meet the mushers” component.
“We’re going to have some of the mushers milling around outside to answer questions about [sled dog racing] throughout the night.”
The festival is kicking off at 5 p.m. with a Northern Lights Parade (lantern procession), music and vendor tables in the 100 Mile Community Hall.
Birch Avenue will be closed from First to Third streets from 4 to 9 p.m. for the set-up and the festival.
The Broom Ball Challenge will see two huge rinks built for a tournament between eight competing teams that signed up at $250 each, raising $2,000 for a local charity.
“They are fighting for the honour of choosing what local charity they want to give it to.”
A human foosball game in front of the community hall will have a giant game table with bars for the already registered players to hold while they go for the goals.
The four banks in town tossed in $250 each for their own race competition where the winner also chooses the recipient organization.
There will be a lot of other events with valuable prizes for the public to participate in, with most entries at $1-2 and carnival-style ticket booths, Armstrong explains.
“We are making it a family friendly event and it’s relatively inexpensive.”
It will have plenty of games for children and popcorn, cotton candy and face-painting by donation to the Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School dry grad committee, as well as “toffee-on-ice.”
A pitch-and-putt, snowball toss and fishing pond are among the seven children’s events that will be going on all night.
The merchant draw is a prize basket filled with more than $1,000 worth of items, where any purchase of $5 or more at participating business that day (some will be open late) will give folks a raffle ticket to enter at the community hall.
(See the merchant list on page A13 or posted online at www.facebook.com/events/1567890516774273/?ref=br_tf.)
Each group or club doing the activities benefits from its own fundraising, Armstrong explains.
“Any money left over at the end is going to a local charity; we are not keeping one penny anywhere.”
