LITTLE FALLS – Four days of parades, live music, vendors, and family activities across Little Falls came to a close Sunday as the 39th Annual Canal Celebration wrapped up with sunny skies for the car show and FoamFest in Eastern Park.
Celebration co-chair Cathy Cristman said the event came together well, weather aside.
“I think it went pretty well,” Cristman said. “We obviously had some issues with the weather on Friday, but it all cleared up.”
That included a soggy start to the parade, which didn’t seem to bother anyone waiting along the route.
“The parade started with some sprinkles, but then the kids didn’t seem to care. They got all their candy,” Cristman said.
The rest of Friday belonged to the newly expanded block party on Main Street. The 3-on-3 basketball tournament ran until 10:30 p.m. and drew roughly 30 teams, Cristman said, while two new additions, a mobile zip line and a mechanical bull, kept kids busy for much of the night.
“The zip line, mobile zip line, and the mechanical bull were a huge hit. Kids were really enjoying that,” she said.
Saturday’s packed schedule, which included the Freedom Run, Chicks Along the Canal, and a movie night in the park, held up until the weather turned again in the evening.
Free activities kept going anyway, including a station where kids made commemorative ornaments ahead of the city’s 250th anniversary, and organizers debuted a new run of event T-shirts.
“We had some kids making the free ornaments, and the T-shirts were really cool,” Cristman said.
By Sunday, the skies had cleared for good.
“With the foam fest here on Sunday and the car show, it’s a gorgeous day to end, and I think people are enjoying themselves,” she said.
Friday night also brought the celebration’s first laser light show, staged on Main Street after the parade wrapped up, and it got dark. Cristman said the response was positive.
“I heard some good comments about it. If you were there, you could definitely see the kids were out there underneath, really enjoying themselves, dancing around,” she said.
That reaction is what the committee is aiming for, according to Cristman.
“Our goal is to make family fun, and it seems like we’re doing that,” she said.
She added that this year’s celebration drew more vendors into Eastern Park than in past years, something organizers hope to keep building on.
“We have more vendors in the park this year than we’ve had in the past, so we’re just going to keep working on growing the event,” she said.
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