Harvest Festival is this weekend

Get ready for an old-fashioned Harvest Festival. The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce has put together three days of activity designed with the family in mind, Sept. 18-20.

Highlights of the festival include a 2-day barbecue cook-off, a pie-baking contest, a quilt show, a human foosball competition, a motorcycle poker run, a community-wide yard sale, hay wagon rides, craft booths including food booths (35 in all), a beer tent and some children’s games.

The BBQ event, sanctioned by the Pacific Northwest Barbecue Association, will feature cooking teams preparing pork, chicken, brisket and ribs, all for a $2,000 top prize. Other cash prizes will be given as well. It begins Friday with load-in, and continues Saturday and Sunday, with prizes awarded about 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

The cook-off will be held at Banks Lake Park, adjacent to North Dam Park, where most of the activity will be held. Over a dozen teams will be competing for the money. You can buy four BBQ samples for $10 Saturday and Sunday.

The quilt show will be held in the old middle school gym. The hay rides will be near the North Dam Park grounds.

Craft booths will provide plenty of gift materials, plus a range of food.

The pie contest, featuring fruit and cream pies, will pit residents against residents as they dig out their favorite recipes. Pies will be auctioned off and samples sold.

A community-wide garage sale will be held on the grounds. You can save your gas and look for bargains all in one place.

The human foosball competition will feature teams playing against each other.

Saturday, there will be a motorcycle poker run that will go from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

There will be games galore on Saturday from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

And if you need liquid refreshment, there’s always the beer tent nearby. Friday 5-10 p.m., Saturday 3-10 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m.

Additional information may be found on the chamber webpage at grandcouleedam.org.