Go Turtles, Go!

This past week we spent time with our grandkids at a cabin "up north". The weather was perfect and the water was warm. The grands got in lots of swimming, kayaking, knee-boarding and fishing. We had awesome campfires and of course, s'mores!

One day we drove into the nearest town to get ice cream. We saw some signs advertising "Turtle Races" on Thursday morning. You can imagine how excited the kids got! They decided we just had to check it out.

Thursday morning came and we headed into the little town of Battle Lake. The Turtle Races are a great fundraiser for their Community Center and its activities. We got there about 30 minutes before the races were scheduled to start. Already there was a line of people buying tickets. (It cost $2 for each race.) Hoola Hoops were available for use to help pass the time and there was music blasting--quite a party feel to it. After 30 minutes of selling tickets, there were still people lined up to buy them.

Finally all tickets had been sold and the races were about to start. When the tickets were purchased the organizers kept one of the two tickets so they could draw numbers. If the ticket you held had one of the numbers drawn you could go pick a turtle. (I don't know if there was any strategy to picking a turtle to race. Some races were won by a bigger turtle, some by a very small one.) Six or seven numbers were drawn for each heat.

                                      The turtles look like they are ready to race!

The turtles were placed on a center circle and had to "race' to the outer circle and cross it. The "fastest' turtle to get there won the heat.

 

You can see that there was quite a crowd to help cheer on the contestants and their turtles. When the announcer told them to start, some contestants yelled at their turtle, some pounded the pavement, some just watched in amazement.

Each of the grands got to participate in two races. Unfortunately none of our turtles had much speed or sense of direction! They weren't too disappointed though because the winner of each heat got a DQ certificate for a small treat. (We had already promised them lunch at the local DQ after the races.) They each had to have their pictures taken with their chosen turtles.

It was good clean fun for all ages and helped raise a lot of money for a good cause. Everyone there had fun whether they raced a turtle or just came to watch. I'm thinking if we ever need to raise some funds this would be a fairly simple way to do it. (I don't think the turtles minded too much. ☺)