Jeeps, Horses to Join Crab Fest Parade Saturday

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The Crab Festival Grand Parade this weekend means the community will see an officious trail of people, animals, and cars mosey along Mill Bay Road Saturday morning. Chamber of Commerce community relations director and crab fest manager Stephanie DeLaGarza says those are just some of the sights you’ll see in the historic Crab Fest parade.

“There’s several horses that are part of the parade. Each year, we normally have a couple of horses, but there are several that are a part of the parade this year. There’s a jeep group of a bunch of folks that drive jeeps here, and they’re really into their jeeps, and they will be participating in the parade, and they tend to have a pretty large turnout of people that kind of come along with them, so that’ll be really exciting.”

She says the parade has changed over the years. For instance, there used to be a Crab Fest queen, but that tradition ended about a decade ago.

“That was a big portion of the parade back then, and it was a lot of girls in high school that would be the queen of the parade and they’d go around and sell tickets. We actually have a lot of old newspapers and things like that at the chamber with pictures of the crab fest queens.”

The location has also changed since roughly seven years ago. DeLaGarza says the parade used to be downtown, and traffic resulting from the reconfiguration of the “Y” intersection forced the parade up to Mill Bay Road. She also says the parade has grown in size, so Mill Bay road is a better route.

She says the crab fest theme this year is “hot crab, cool people,” and the various floats in the parade will be decorated according to that theme. She says the Chamber of Commerce board of directors will scan the floats and grant an award to the most well-decorated one among them.

The parade begins at 10 a.m. Saturday and continues between Powell and Bartel Avenues.