SEQUIM — One May parade day about five years back, “the skies opened up.”

So recalled Alice Beebe, organizer of the Irrigation Festival’s giant procession. Rain pummeled the parade route.

Fortunately, the floats, bands and classic cars already had completed their cruise down Washington Street in Sequim, some 45 minutes before the storm.

“It has never rained on my parade,” Beebe said.

She headed into her ninth year as “queen bee” of the Irrigation Festival Grand Parade, which will begin at noon Saturday on Washington Street just west of Brown Road.

It’s part of a full weekend of celebration that also includes a Kid’s Parade at 10 a.m. Saturday, a logging show today and Saturday and a host of other events.

Strongman contest

Today alone will be the Marunde Invitational Strongman Competition, the World Champion Auto Daredevils Show and a fireworks display — all in the lot next to Carrie Blake Park, 200 N. Blake Ave.

The grand finale will be the Grand Parade at noon Saturday.

And the 2009 event — which will showcase 130 entries from across the North Olympic Peninsula and elsewhere — stars many community groups that haven’t been part of the parade for years, if ever.

New local stars

“There are quite a few new local ones,” Beebe said.

By “local,” she means organizations across the North Olympic Peninsula will join the showcase, from the Miss Pinto Horse Association of Quilcene to the “Save the Pool” crew from Port Angeles to the Forks Old-Fashioned Fourth of July float.

From Sequim, there will be a troupe of cyclists known as the Pedal Pushers, plus the Dog Park Pals, the Olympic Disc Dogs and Northwest Eye Surgeons, who Beebe said will have an entry that looks like a big eye.

Longest running party

This is the 114th annual multi-block party — the longest-running community bash in Washington state — to which business people, musicians, pioneers, police officers, firefighters, children, seniors, animals and artists are invited.

If you can wave and smile, you’re in.

One example of the commerce-art community blend can be found on the Olympic Theatre Arts float, in fact a trailer loaded with wooden benches.

Local artists such as Laurie Yarnes and Jack and Anne Peacock have adorned them with flocks of geese flying toward the sun, Garry oak trees, fish swimming above bamboo, butterflies, lavender-motif tiles and messages such as “Live simply, laugh often, love deeply.”

Elaine Caldwell, an organizer of the project, added that local businesses and service groups paid for the art benches so that OTA can use them as fundraisers.

The final sale of the benches is to be at OTA’s Gala dinner and dance at 7 Cedars Casino on May 19, “but anyone can bid on a bench for their own at any time between now and the Gala,” Caldwell said.

After the parade, the benches will be on display in downtown Sequim and at OTA, 414 N. Sequim Ave.

Proceeds from their sale will help OTA complete the main theater it hopes to open by the end of this year.

Information about the benches and the Gala is available by phoning the OTA office at 360-683-7326 or visiting www.OlympicTheatreArts.com.

‘Magical place’

The Grand Parade includes scores of other homegrown entries, and of course the Irrigation Festival’s own “Sequim: A Magical Place” theme float bearing Queen Holly Hudson and princesses Elisha Elliott, Meghan Gammel and Lindsay Merrell — four 17-year-old Sequim high schoolers who’ll pose as fairies in the woodland scene.

Mixed in, too, will be entries from farther-flung locales: The Platinum Plush drill team and the Seafair pirates will come from Seattle and the Clan Gordon Pipe Band will blow in from Tacoma, Beebe said.

And though the Olympic View Middle School Marching Band won’t bring over its usual 400 people from Mukilteo, there will be 250 players in Saturday’s parade.

Also filling the air with drums, brass and batons will be high and middle school marching bands from Sequim, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Bremerton and Chimacum.

When asked one more time about whether moisture will be part of the parade, Beebe said only that “it’s under control.”

And what says the National Weather Service forecast: a mix of clouds and sunshine, with a high of 61 degrees.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.