Organizers hope flashy cars and steaming hot gumbo prove to be a winning combination for visitors to Hot Springs this weekend, as the 20th annual Corvette Weekend and the fourth annual Hot Springs Gumbo and Crawfish Festival get underway.
The Corvette Weekend begins today at 9 a.m. with a scenic road trip that will leave from Hot Springs Convention Center, along with a new autocross that will start in the J.C. Penney parking lot.
The annual Corvette Parade through downtown Hot Springs and Hot Springs National Park will leave the convention center at 4 p.m. today and proceed on Central Avenue to West Mountain, before returning to the convention center from Malvern Avenue. The public is welcome to attend the parade.
According to Joyce Johnson, director at large, the Central Arkansas Corvette Club considers Hot Springs to be a favorite destination in the Corvette community.
"You can just feel the excitement; this is one of their favorite towns," she said. "Not only is Hot Springs beautiful, but the bath houses and shops offer so much. People get excited when they're getting ready to come to Hot Springs."
On Saturday, the Indoor Corvette Show will start at 8 a.m. at the convention center and be open until 2 p.m. Silent and live auctions will take place during the day, and the Sixth annual Valve Cover Car Race will kick off at 10 a.m. The show is free and open to the public.
This year's event not only celebrates 20 years of the Corvette Weekend, but 50 years of the Central Arkansas Corvette Club.
The Hot Springs Gumbo and Crawfish Festival opens to the public Saturday from 2-6 p.m. in Hill Wheatley Plaza, but organizers said it's best to get there early. Admission is $10 per person.
"It looks like we're going to have a minimum of 15 gumbo teams," said Bert Clevenger, president of the Spa City Blues Society, organizers of the event.
"We've got crawfish from JK's Crawfish, and we're expecting probably 800 or 900 people," he said. "We're a rain or shine event, too."
This is the fourth year for the festival, he said, which started in the Exchange Street Parking Plaza in 2015.
"The first year was in the parking deck and we quickly realized it was not big enough for us; we immediately outgrew our rented space," he said.
Gumbo connoisseurs will find a variety of traditional and nontraditional gumbos, Clevenger said, ranging from the chicken and sausage varieties to seafood.
"And it's best to get here early because the favorites tend to run out quick," he said.
The proceeds from the gumbo festival are put back to work in the community, Clevenger said, providing lessons and instruments for the blues society's Blues in the Schools program, as well as sending local musicians to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tenn.
"Every penny of what we raise goes back into our community," he said.
Local on 04/20/2018