A center of Bridgefest’s fun brings thousands of festival goers to Kestner Park each Father’s Day weekend. But there’s plenty to do outside one of the area’s largest public spaces.
In Hancock, the fun starts on Friday with Kids on the Green and clears out Quincy Street on Saturday morning for the classic car show. Plus there are numerous concerts between both cities.
But Unite Mental Health will get people moving around town with a new fun event, Decks to Docks.
A lot going on and we don’t see a lot of things out there for boats and we know they’re out there. So we thought, hey, let’s kind of have this really fun event where the boats, they can register online, and then they make different stops along the way. – Angela Price, Co-founder, Unite Mental Health and Awareness
Each year Bridgefest offers a chance to relax and enjoy the sunshine. On Saturday it isn’t hard to find the Portage Canal full of boaters, kayaks, and canoes.
The scavenger hunt game encourages boaters, but teams in cars are welcome to join, to explore several businesses in the Houghton and Hancock to collect a card.
And you can stop at any of these places on a boat. You can walk there. You can drive there, but they’re a small craft H &Y Marina They’re going to have games and Volworth hot dogs there and that should be a good time there and then Portage Lake Cabins will be another stop. They’re gonna have a photo booth. They’re gonna have mocktails, maybe some water balloons, and if you want to do any last-minute registrations, they’ll be there. They’ll have donuts. – Angela Price, Co-founder, Unite Mental Health and Awareness
Unite Mental Health Co-founder Angela Price says another stop will bring card collectors to Black Ice Comics.
Kind of a different stop. There’ll be challenge coins there and each of these will have a separate raffle so that one should be fun. You kind of find the challenge coins, scan the code, and enter into a raffle. – Angela Price, Co-founder, Unite Mental Health and Awareness
Decks to Docks supports Unite Mental Health and Awareness. The non-profit open its doors in 2022. Co-founder Angela Price says the goal to fill gaps in mental health care has been well received in the community.
And the funds will really go to expanding the services that we can offer. Just last month we opened up an office in Baraka County. We have three in-person or telehealth therapists down there. We’ve also kind of outgrown the main office that we had here. So we opened up another, like a family center where there’s pediatric mental health and where we’re children and families and like couples and marriage therapy. We just want to continue to kind of expand our services, not just the number of people that we can help, but also the different types of services. And this will help that. – Angela Price, Co-founder, Unite Mental Health and Awareness
Price adds for folks coming into town from outside the area, Decks to Docks, offers a great opportunity to explore the Houghton and Hancock area.
So really one of the aims of this is to really involve the whole community, Houghton, Hancock, and so this will allow people to kind of have some fun and see what else is out there in our community, especially if people are coming from out of town or a little bit further away. – Angela Price, Co-founder, Unite Mental Health and Awareness
Registration for Decks to docks can be found online, or at several sites in Houghton and Hancock. Use the QR code to access the registration link. On Saturday groups will compete to collect cards from each business in an attempt to complete a set.
Price says the group will meet participants in Kestner Park at 4 pm to announce winners and give away prizes.
