If you didn’t have the opportunity to attend and enjoy the eighth annual River Town Days held this past weekend, you missed a great time with many new events and attractions. And, to top it off, planning has already begun to make the 2012 River Town Days, scheduled for Mothers’ Day Weekend, May 11-12, 2012, even bigger and better next year.

With any event of this magnitude, it would be impossible to pull off without the help and support of hundreds of people throughout the community that contribute in many different ways. The Chamber of Commerce staff—Diane Strickland, Kim Walden and Nadine Thomas—pretty much lived and breathed this event for the past several months. Their “roommate” at the Chamber building, Industrial Development Director Rick McCaskill, also played a key role. Kudos to them.

The River Town Days committee, lead by Samantha Myers and Adrienne Harrison, put together a wonderful team of volunteers that caused the event to happen rather seamlessly. And any issues or problems that arose over the weekend were handled so quickly and efficiently that they were pretty much unnoticeable.

The response and support, through sponsorships, from the business community in Bainbridge and Decatur County was tremendous and without those businesses, this event would not have been so successful.

This event is so beneficial for our community.

It allows people to enjoy a great weekend with a wide variety of activities, at a great location, with great weather, and with each other. Promoting community pride, cohesion and recreation are the main objectives of this event. I think all of these goals were accomplished this past weekend.

Attendees got to dance on Friday night to the Wilson Dean Band and the Kinchafoonee Cowboys, got to snap a photo with the state record alligator, got to ride on a pirate ship, got to catch a fish from a trout pond, got to ride a mechanical bull, got to climb a rock wall, got to find a treasure from “rummage row,” got to see an unbelievable water ski exhibition, got to eat fried Oreos, got to … well, you get the idea. It was a lot of fun.

I have no doubts that next year’s event will be just as successful.