JOYCE — It may have rained on Joyce’s parade but that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of those at the 28th annual Joyce Daze Wild Blackberry Festival on Saturday.
Despite precedent — organizer Kathy Walton said last week that never once in the preceding 27 years had it ever rained on Joyce Daze — umbrellas were unfurled during the festivities around the Joyce General Store, Joyce Depot Museum and Family Kitchen restaurant.
Still, blackberry pies were savored during a homemade blackberry pie contest sponsored by Peninsula Daily News, the best in mustaches and beards was proudly displayed and more than 70 floats and other entries flowed down Highway 112.
Seventeen pies were entered in the pie contest.
Joan Rogers of Joyce won first place and $50 for her pie.
For second place, judges couldn’t decide between pies baked by Rosemary Sutton of Port Angeles — who used her grandmother’s recipe — and Roxanne Olsen of Joyce. The two second-place winners took home $25 each.
The grand prize winner of the beard and mustache contest was Anthony Szabo of Clallam Bay, who was given a carving of a Lake Crescent Beardsley trout.
Szabo also took top honors in the “anything goes” category.
Nate Maxwell of Sequim won the award for best goatee, while Eric Tobin of Port Angeles took the prize for the best mustache.
“Mojave” John of Sequim was recognized for sporting the best beard.
The festival was hosted by the Joyce Daze teen royalty: Queen Mikela Williams and princesses Bonny Hazelett and Kailee Rose.
Dignitaries in the parade included Grand Pioneers Sylvia and Dianne Durrwachter, identical twins who moved to Joyce in 1946, when they were 4, and the 2010 grand marshal, Willy Lou Lawrence, who said she was celebrating her 90th birthday, which will be on Aug. 19, early by riding in the parade.
