After the event was cancelled twice last year, the Lone Butte Rocks Festival returned to the community on July 14.
“This year was a huge improvement from that and considering all the other events going on, we had a good turnout,” said Natalie Sass, president of the Lone Butte, Horse Lake Community Association. “I think we did pretty darn decent. We had a wonderful turnout and the weather was fabulous. Everywhere you went it was full of people and full of cars.”
Sass is not sure how many people showed up to the event but estimated between the whole town, a few thousand showed up to experience live music, face painting, laser tag, pie eating contests and other activities including human foosball and redneck horseshoe throwing.
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If Sass had to pick one personal highlight of the day, it would be going from location to location to surprise the festival goers with prizes.
“I got to shock people with a random prize so that was fun,” she said. “We picked a certain thing and found a person who fit our criteria and got to surprise them with a gift certificate to either the Iron Horse Pub or the Lone Rock Cafe.”
The gift certificates were worth $25 a piece.
Sass went to three different locations, starting with the Historical Society looking for anyone wearing a bright-coloured shirt. There was only one person fitting the criteria, so when she gave him the prize he was quite shocked given that he and his wife were only there by chance.
Afterwards, the couple went to the Lone Rock Cafe to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.
The second place was the sporting goods store and a person wearing a camo hat was chosen. The third person was a lady wearing a big sun hat at the Fire Hall.
The fourth person was given the prize by someone else, but it was someone by the stage who was watching all the acts perform.
“Everything went so fabulously I can’t really pick another moment than that,” said the association’s president on giving out the prizes.
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At the stage, music was provided by Carolyn Spencer, Mr. T, 100 Miles from Nowhere and the James Gang Band. 100 Mile House-resident Mark Allen performed at the Water Tower Park and the Cariboo Ramblers played for a couple hours at the Fire Hall.
The festival took a few months to plan, by making sure they could rent the stage and getting all the pieces together.
“Now that we’ve got a blueprint of what we do, it comes together pretty quick,” Sass said, who has been in charge of the show for three of the event’s nine years.
For the tenth year anniversary of the festival, Sass said she hopes to get outdoor power so the stage could be moved closer to the picnic tables and get a bigger barbecue to feed all the people who come faster.
Sass and the Lone Butte, Horse Lake Community Association would like to thank all the entertainment, volunteers and people who came out to the festival.
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