Published: October 09, 2008 11:47 pm         

Annual Covered Bridge Festival starts today

Hundreds of vendors ready their stands

BRIDGETON — With the large number of food vendors, Mike Roe sometimes calls the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival the covered dish festival.

Roe, owner of Bridgeton Mill, expects to sell between 8,000 and 10,000 pounds of various flour, meal and pancake mixes during the 52nd annual Covered Bridge Festival, which starts today and ends Oct. 19.

Hundreds of vendors will be working throughout the county from Tangier to Rosedale and Sylvania to Fallen Rock and everywhere in between.

Roe said 70 to 80 vendors will be at the mill.

New at the mill this year for the festival will be Pigs in a Pumpkin Blanket, a breakfast sausage wrapped in a pumpkin pancake, Roe said.

He and his wife bought the mill in 1994 and have been restoring it since that time. Though they don’t spend as much time as others in the community preparing for the festival, Roe recognizes its importance, noting that there was no way they could continue their work on the mill throughout the year without the revenue from the festival.

“It’s a beautiful area, covered bridges, turning of the leaves,” Roe said. “… There are thousands of booths with everything from soup to nuts.”

Randy and Pam Marcum of New Castle run two of those booths, one at the Bridgeton Mill and another in Mansfield. They sell Appalachian planters, benches, arbors and bird feeders at their Primitive Woods stand.

Their bird feeders are made of wood and a 2-liter pop bottle.

“I tell people I’m trying to do my part to recycle,” said 62-year-old Randy, who’s been setting up a stand at Bridgeton since 1994.

He said he thinks this year’s festival will have a large attendance because there’s no entry fee and people don’t have to buy anything.

“It’s a good day’s entertainment,” he said.

It will be Jeff and Cathy Thomas’ fifth time setting up a booth at the festival. Like the Marcums, they also set up at multiple locations: Rockville, Bridgeton and Mansfield.

They attend at least seven festivals throughout the Midwest, operating their Lincoln Candle Co. stand.

“This is one of the nicest festivals that we do,” said Jeff, of Convoy, Ohio. “It’s genuine. The people in the area are genuine. It’s natural beauty, not necessarily created. It’s nostalgic. That’s what we like.”

New to the festival this year are authors Rochelle Pennington and Colleen Coble.

Author of “Anathema,” a Christian fiction suspense book set in Parke County, Coble will be signing autographs at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Big Tent in Rockville. Pennington, author of “The Christmas Tree Ship” and “An Old Fashioned Christmas,” will be signing autographs at the Big Tent in Rockville every day of the festival.

“It’s [something] totally different than we’ve ever had,” said Cathy Harkrider, Parke County Inc. executive secretary, about the authors’ presence.

Something not new but growing each year is the Military Ceremony, in which tribute is paid to veterans and active military men and women, Harkrider said. It will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday on the Rockville Courthouse lawn.

“It’s hard to tell a person to do one thing,” she said about the festival. “Different people come for different things.”

Maps are available online and at the Parke County Inc. office at 127 S. Jefferson St. in Rockville for those who want to drive from bridge to bridge. Bus tours are also available from Rockville for $10 per person or $7.50 for children 12 and under. Three different tours are available.

Harkrider said the tours are advantageous because people get to “see more of the county and don’t have to worry about getting lost.”

The festival will continue rain or shine, so Harkrider advised that people check the weather before heading out.

Parke County Inc. will be open every day of the festival from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, call (765) 569-5226 or visit www.coveredbridges.com.

Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812) 231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.