Liberty Lake Days starts Friday

The city of Liberty Lake is celebrating bygone eras with the Liberty Lake Days, a car show and community picnic that will bring back activities for kids they may not have tried.

Starting Friday at 7 p.m., the festivities will kick off with a car cruise and street dance at 7 p.m. in downtown Liberty Lake. All classic-car owners are invited to participate for free, although donations will be accepted for the Inland Northwest Car Club Scholarship Fund. Liberty Lake Road between Appleway Avenue and Country Vista Drive will be closed between 4 and 10 p.m. for the event.

Saturday’s events start at 11 a.m. in Pavillion Park with free carnival games, such as the milk bottle toss, or contests like the egg toss, brick walk and the gunnysack race.

For those too young to remember, a brick walk is a race where participants stand on bricks with ropes laced through one of the three holes in the bricks. The racers pull on the ropes to lift their feet to get to the end of the race.

“They were hard to find,” said Parks and Recreation coordinator Michelle Griffin of the bricks.

Amanda Tainio, the Planning and Building services manager, said the day is based on the original All-Valley picnics of the 1920s. To continue with this theme, there will be a Charleston dance contest at 4:30 p.m. The audience will decide the winner.

“I’ll be in the prize booth giving away a gajillion toys,” Griffin said.

There will also be a pie-eating contest at 3:30 p.m. Noted participants in this year’s contest include Mayor Wendy Van Orman, Spokane Valley Mayor Tom Towey and Central Valley School District Superintendent Ben Small.

Along with the games and contests, there will be vendor booths throughout the park.

This is the second year the city has formally organized this event – last year about 1,500 people attended the event. Griffin said they are estimating around 2,500 people this year.

Parking will be available at Liberty Lake Elementary School where a shuttle will be available to take visitors to the park. On-street parking is also available.