City kicks off Halloween season with annual Splash & Fest of Fall
The free annual pumpkin patch inside the Sedona Community Pool takes place from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Oct. 17.
While this is a free event, it does require advance registration on the Sedona Parks and Recreation website to gain all of the benefits of attending, such as a goodie bag, pumpkin and door prizes.
The pool is located at 570 Posse Ground Road, north of West Sedona School.
“Pumpkin Splash is the most unique pumpkin patch in northern Arizona, to my knowledge,” Parks and Recreation Special Events Coordinator Jason Vargo said about the event, which he anticipates will have about 250 attendees. “We throw about 300 pumpkins into our community pool, and let the families dive in to select the perfect pumpkin.”
For those attendees that can’t wait to start creating their masterworks, they can take their newly acquired pumpkin to the city of Sedona’s Fest of Fall that is taking place the same day at Posse Grounds Park and enter it into the pumpkin-carving contest that will be taking place throughout the festival, with the winners announced at 4 p.m.
“We’ve been doing for a couple years now at all of our largest events, with Green Light Solutions for waste diversion, and one of those waste diversion strategies is to collect compostable items and take care of those in a proper manner,” Vargo said about the fate of the innards of the pumpkins during the contest.
Other small games, such as the ring toss, and prizes will be set up for attendees thanks to Parks and Recreation volunteers.
“It’s a pretty well-established event, and I think people just are generally really excited about it,” Vargo said. “So I’m really excited about having it be the precursor to Fest of Fall and have this bridge between Pumpkin Splash and Fest of Fall with the pumpkin-carving.”
The pool’s regular rules are in effect during the event, so any swimmers wanting to go into the deep end will have to take a swim test to prove that they are safely able to do so.
“After the big splash, head over to our no-mess sticker station to decorate your pumpkin, then grab a goodie bag filled with fun Halloween favors to take home,” the city stated.
The NEWS will preview the Fest of Fall and other Halloween events in a story next week.
For more information and to register for the event visit sedonaaz.gov or call 928-282-7098.
