Santa Maria Valley Strawberry Festival Starts Friday
Final preparations are underway at the Santa Maria Fairpark for the opening of the 29th annual Santa Maria Valley Strawberry Festival.
This year’s theme is “A Sweet Adventure” and it promises to deliver with a wide array of food choices, pony rides and petting zoo, unique vendor gifts and exhibits, live music, traditional carnival rides and game booths.
Selling gifts for all ages at festivals and county fairs across the western United States is a full-time job for Alex Lopez and his mother.
“Vegas is our next stop”, Lopez says as he and his mother finish setting up their stand along the main Causeway at the Santa Maria Fairpark, “its a lot of work, it takes us about two days, but its okay because this is a big show, my mother has been coming here for ten years.”
The Lopez’s are among an army of festival vendors and crew members who worked well into the night Thursday getting ready for when gates open for the Santa Maria Valley Strawberry Festival Friday morning.
Most of the vendors are counting on the foot traffic the festival attracts with tens of thousands of people expected to flock to the Fairpark over the next three days and nights.
“We have several that we invented and have patents for”, says festival vendor Don Genovese who is selling his own line of toys, “we’ve only done two other fairs so far, we’ve done the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles and we did the Bakersfield Fair and this will be the third event like this that we’ve attempted to try.”
Along with live music and other live events, there are food booths to satisfy every appetite and of course everything strawberry, from shortcake to ice cream to smoothies.
There’s also a strawberry eating contest every afternoon at 4pm.
Other popular attractions are the petting zoo, the pony rides and a live alligator exhibit.
Like every year, the rides are a big attraction, and they are as big and bold as ever this year thanks to skilled crews that maintain, set-up, take-down and travel with the rides they work on keeping safety a top priority at all times.
“Always gotta be paying attention, all the time”, says Lars Taylor who works on the popular flying chairs ride, “its a high maintenance ride, you gotta make sure everything is good to go, chains, bolts, if everything is not good to go then we can’t go up, we can’t run it.”
The gates open Friday morning at 10 a.m. with free admittance for seniors 62 and older (on Friday only). Kids Day is on Saturday with $1 admission for children 6 to 11 years old all day.
For more information go to santamariafairpark.com, and don’t miss KCOY 12 On the Road from the Santa Maria Strawberry Festival, today at 5 and 6 p.m.
