Crawfish, boats, and trains offer weekend fun

Finding a handy place to park is advised for the weekend as families may want to be traveling the county for activities. Crawfish will be celebrated in Mauriceville, drag boat races with food and music will be at the Orange Boat Ramp, and Depot Day will be held at the historic train depot in downtown Orange.

The annual Mauriceville Crawfish Bash, the oldest continuing festival in Orange County, will kick off on Friday evening and run through Saturday night. This year, 17 crawfish and shrimp boilers from across Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana will be at the festival, which will close Saturday night with Cajun music from Ryan Foret and Foret Tradition.

Crawfish and shrimp lovers may want to wear their stretchy pants. Tickets at the gate are $45 for all you can eat crawfish and shrimp boiled in spices and herbs along with corn and potatoes. Some boilers even thrown in other foods.

The Mauriceville Heritage Association sponsors the event and this will be their 43rd Crawfish Bash. In April, the group sponsored the Miss Orange County Pageant with Evei Juneann Shipley, a senior at Nederland High, crowned as queen. She will reign over the festival and be featured in the Saturday morning parade.

The Crawfish Bash gates will open at the Mauriceville Community Center on Cohenour Road at 5 p.m. Friday with a cornhole tournament at 7 p.m.

Then on Saturday, a parade through Mauriceville will start at 10 a.m. and feature Miss Orange County. The gates to the festival will also open at 10 a.m. Parade winners and scholarship winners will be announced at noon. Chris Hantz will perform from noon to 1 p.m., and a crawfish eating contest is set for 1 p.m.

From 1 to 3 p.m., Seth Stevens will play, with Royboy, Killin' Time and Friends on stage from 3 to 6 p.m.

Winners of the crawfish boiling contest will be announced at 6 p.m. and then Ryan Foret will play from 7 to 10 p.m.

The Orange Convention and Visitors Bureau is sponsoring the Rock the River event on the Sabine River at the City Boat Ramp off Simmons Drive. The Deep South Racing Association is bringing drag boat competitors to race along the river for spectators. Admission is free. No dogs or other pets are allowed.

The rocking will begin Friday evening when Keith Frank brings his zydeco band back to the Riverside Pavilion with a concert from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Attendees should bring lawn chairs or blankets for sitting. The gates will open at 5 p.m. Friday with food vendors set up in the park.

Saturday, the gates will open at 10 a.m. and the event will have a kid zone with inflatables, games, and activities. Boat races will be going on throughout the day.

Food vendors will include All the Smoke BBQ, Blinky's Sno Cones, Bobby's Smokehouse, Home Plate, Manny's Melting Pot, Mice Ice, and Wing Junkiez.

Live entertainment lineup for Saturday is the Flip Flop Man from 1 to 2 p.m, The Pegwinders from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., Jamie Talbert from 5 to 6 p.m., and the Velcro Pygmies at 6:30 p.m.

Races will continue on Sunday with the gates opening at 10 a.m. The kid zone will still be up.

Because of the river racing, the Boat Ramp will be closed for use by the general public beginning Thursday and continuing through Sunday.

The Depot Day fundraiser for the historic Southern Pacific train Station will begin on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. (See separate story in this issue of The Record.)