1st Ever Watauga Riverkeeper Festival Huge Success

Cross-posted from Upper Watauga Riverkeeper

On Saturday July 24, The Watuaga Riverkeeper and Appalachian Voices showed the high country a great time at the first ever Watauga Riverkeeper Festival. Held at the Valle Crucis Community Park, the event brought out kids and adults to have fun and celebrate the Watauga River. The purpose of the festival was to promote environmental stewardship through outdoor recreation. Getting out and enjoying natural treasures like the Watauga River helps us appreciate them and see the need for their protection.

Some of the festivities included fly fishing clinics, a watermelon eating contest,  nature walks, field games for the kids, a bouncy hut, local vendors and food. Great music was provided by The Alberta Boys and Melissa Reeves.

A special thanks goes out to all our sponsors:

Pearls and body paint at the WRK festival. Check out the mountains and the river. Now thats our kind of art!

Tsuga Canopies

River And Earth Adventures

Earth Fair

Mast General Store

Foscoe Fishing

Footsloggers

The Town of Banner Elk

Dot Griffith and Jamie Goodman took these pictures that do the event more justice than my description.

More Pictures from Jamie Goodman can be found here.

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Kids in the Watauga river at the festival. Yes, thankfully the Watauga is still a wild mountain river where kids can play till their hearts content, er well at least until their parents haul them out. No concrete, no docks, no boats. Just kids, rocks and the river, the way it ought to be.

Boys playing in the Watauga River. Ok, so raise your hand if you have fond memories from your childhood of swimming in a clean cold mountain river with your friends?

People enjoying the shade and the food under the pavilion

Hula hooping to the live music

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1st Ever Watauga Riverkeeper Festival Huge Success