Destination: Dover Days!

Girl playing catch the duck with a fishing net.Excitement fills the air upon arrival. Laughter was heard all around and the aroma of mouth watering food was wafting throughout the town. Can you guess where we are? No? We’re not at a fair, we’re at Dover Days, September 13, 2014! What goes on at Dover Days you ask? Only Dover residents know but we are about to tell you all about the food, the games & prizes, and how we prepare!

What is that heaven-like smell? Is it hot dogs being roasted on the grill, or greasy hamburgers being topped with gooey, melted cheese. Trick question . . . its both! Dover Days always has a lovely assortment of delicious food. If you would rather eat healthy, try out the salad bar or the make-your-own-trail mix booth. You could smell the grills cooking for miles around! When you went to order your food, you could hear the mouth watering sizzle of food being heated on the hot grill.  At this event, you’ll never go hungry!

The thing that attracts most of the audience here, on this fantabulous day, is the games. You’ll have no trouble finding one, because there are lots of them! Enough so everybody leaves with at least a prize or two. There are games like spin the wheel where you spin a wheel to win tokens. Sam, a fifth grader from Chickering School ran a game, with the help of Ryan.  They ran the Marshmallow Toss, a game where you try to get a marshmallow in a basket, if you do … you win tokens! They said they loved watching all the customers that came to play. They loved working and plan to be back next year to bring joy to little children. Then, there is plinko, a crowd favorite, where you drop what appears to be a giant connect four piece into a wall of spikes, and whichever slot it falls into at the bottom you win the amount of tokens listed on it. You have to pay real money to get tickets, but they’re worth it! With tickets you can play games and win tokens. With tokens you can buy prizes. But don’t feel like they’re ripping you off by charging a dollar a ticket. Dover Days is a non-profit fair, and all the money they make goes to the Dover PTO and the town of Dover. The prizes are much better than any prizes you would find at an arcade. They have everything from alien slime, to inflatable baseball bats, to super huge whoopie cushions. You name it, they had it! Well, maybe not a pet dragon, but they have almost everything. What’s not fun about getting to dunk a unfortunate man/woman into a tank of cold, smelly, filmy water? We’d definitely want to do it! The victims change every year. Once it was Mr. Wadness, a fifth grade teacher and Dr. Reinemann the Vice Principal, once it was even Officer Harry, a D.A.R.E. instructor and police man. Who knows? Maybe it could be you next time!

But if you want to get your body working and still have fun, definitely check out the bouncy houses. There are tons of them, Inflatable bouncy house - called racing course.increasing by number every year. It’s located on the Dover Library lawn, right across from the main section. There are racing courses where you try to race your friends through inflatable obstacles, and there are mile high slides that send you plummeting down a slippery surface at what feels like 100 mph!

Boy, all these games and prizes are making me tired. Why not take a ride on the world famous hay ride? The hay ride comes and you get in the oversized tractor full of hay, and ride around town on a voyage you won’t soon forget.

In order to make all this happen, you need to prepare quite a bit. We interviewed Sam, a fifth grade student that witnessed the set up of Dover Days. He even helped! When asked how he helped he elaborated on constantly having to create new signs to make sure people don’t get lost at this extraordinary event. He also described how many volunteers they had to hire in order to put Dover Days in Farm tractor pulling hey wagon with people.motion. They needed one person at each of the booths and at least 2 people at the prize table. Oh, he also had to help brain storm prizes for token winners. Even the adults played games too. That would take a lot of knowing what kids like to encourage them to play the games and get the prizes.

Dover Days was a big success this year, and sure, maybe the Cupcake Booth wasn’t there. But  hey, nobody is perfect, right? No matter how anyone puts it, Dover Day will ALWAYS be with us, here in our hearts.

Reported by Lauren, Audrey, and Ryan

Reported by Lauren, Audrey, and Ryan