Pumpkin and scavenger hunts, a parade through town, trunk-or-treating and more
A pandemic isn’t stopping Cloverdale from embracing the Halloween spirit. Though October festivities look different this year, Cloverdalians have a host of events planned for the week of Halloween.
With October events in years past plagued by fires, the Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce looked to last year’s festivities as an example of making light of a difficult situation.
“Last year was really cool because it sort of all came together with the kids starting at the senior center and then walking downtown to all of the businesses and getting candy. There were grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, little ones, big ones and they all walked down the boulevard and ended up at a Trunk or Treat at the Citrus Fair. This was on the heels of five days of no power and no gas for the most part,” said Neena Hanchett, director of the Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce, which is organizing this year’s festivities.
With everything going on this year, the chamber wanted to figure out a way to plan Halloween events that would bring the community together, even when community members have to be socially distanced apart.
Kristi Shehan, owner of The Villas Assisted Living, recommended doing something similar to what was done for Cloverdale’s Easter Egg Hunt — community members decorated Easter eggs and put them up in their yards or windows and parents drove their kids around to tally the number of eggs they saw. As a result, beginning Oct. 26 kids can participate in two different kinds of Halloween hunts — a neighborhood pumpkin hunt with participants in neighborhoods throughout Cloverdale and an itsy-bitsy spider scavenger hunt with fake spiders hidden in local business windows. For both hunts, participants can pick up a map of participants outside of the Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce Office (126 N. Cloverdale Blvd.) to get counting.
“Building on an interactive, safe, social-distancing-but-still-fun event, we thought we could involve our residential community,” Hanchett said.
On Oct. 30, a small parade will weave its way through town. Using a map that may be familiar to parents who participated in Jefferson Elementary’s end-of-year parade, the parade will start at Jefferson, move south toward Furber Plaza and loop around to Foothill Boulevard and Healdsburg Avenue, before making its way back to Jefferson.
No streets will be shut down for the parade, and people are encouraged to view it from their nearby neighborhoods to limit the likelihood of people gathering in groups.
“(We’re doing it) so that families can gather, so that people are going to be with people they’re always around,” Hanchett said about the decision to hold a smaller parade that lasts longer and covers a greater area. “We’ll have people alongside the vehicles handing out candy and the neighborhoods that we don’t go into or we miss, they can come along Treadway where there’s no real houses there and get candy — or in the other neighborhoods, however they want to do it. We can’t go to every single solitary house, but we can let people know between 5 and 7 p.m., this is the route.”
On Halloween, families can participate in a drive-thru trunk or treat at the Citrus Fair. From 4 to 7 p.m., around 40 cars/trunks will be parked at the fire and participants can drive through the parked cars and be handed candy. Everybody has to be masked and trunk-or-treaters should stay in their cars.
Folks who decorate their houses — either for Halloween or Día de los Muertos — can also participate in a house decorating contest that will be judged by Cloverdale Mayor Gus Wolter. Photos of decorated houses can be submitted at the Chamber’s website, cloverdalechamber.com
“We don’t encourage the kids going door-to-door to get candy because I think people are kind of concerned about breaking out of their pod. We’re hoping this is a great idea and it’ll have some legs and take us a few years down the road,” she said.
“We’re just trying to think a little bit out of the COVID-box and hopefully we can, as a community, have some fun with our kids and our families, our neighborhoods and our businesses,” Hanchett said.
Separate from the activities being put on by the Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce, the Alexander Valley Film Society is hosting a carpool cinema event at the Cloverdale Citrus Fairgrounds on Oct. 24. The drive-in film event is featuring “Hocus Pocus.” The show starts at 6:30 p.m. and tickets are $30 per car. You can find out more information here.
Got candy?
Holding a week of Halloween events means you need a lot of candy. The Chamber of Commerce is currently accepting donations of wrapped and bagged candy to be used for the parade, and for the trunk-or-treat. Donations can be dropped at the Chamber office.
To sign up to participate in the Chamber’s Halloween events, find maps for the pumpkin and spider hunts and more, click here.
