Bayview Daze

On the Saturday morning of Bayview Daze, children along Main Avenue hold plastic bags. In 2023 the Coeur d’Alene Press advised bringing them, because candy is tossed from the floats and truck beds of the street parade. The parade starts at 11 a.m. and follows Main Avenue, also called Ralph Jones Boulevard, through the lakefront town. It is formally the Old Fashioned “Just Plain Fun” Parade, and it opens a celebration of Independence Day held the first weekend of July on Lake Pend Oreille. The weekend also includes a three-day arts and crafts fair, a lighted boat parade and fireworks on Saturday night. The Bayview Chamber of Commerce runs it.

The parade on Ralph Jones Boulevard

The Press described the 2025 parade in detail. First responders and emergency vehicles rolled down Main Avenue, along with floats for area businesses and members of American Legion Post 149 on foot. A boy on the Lake Pend Oreille Yacht Club float showed off to the crowd. Firefighters from the Timberlake Fire Protection District handed out candy beside their red engines while adults applauded and called out “thank you for your service.” A pirate walking the route gave a plastic sword to a boy named Lucas. Jezzarae Hedlund has come to the parade with her friend Jackie Macdonald since their children were babies. “They wait all year for this,” Hedlund said. “Basically, starting at Christmas, they ask, ‘How long until the Fourth of July?’”

The paper’s crowd counts vary. It put the 2023 parade at about 1,000 people and more than 25 entries, and its 2025 report described thousands of onlookers.

Uncle Sam and his Bucket Brigade work the curb, collecting money for the next year’s fireworks. In 2025 they were Bob Prince and Jamie Berube. The grand marshals in 2023 were Bruce and Judy Robinson. In 2025 the grand marshal was Norma Jean Knowles, the chamber president, who rode in the back of a convertible with her sons Lucas and Josh. “It’s a reluctant honor,” she said, laughing. “I enjoy it, I’ve been doing (Bayview Daze) for quite a while.”

After the parade, vendors sell handmade crafts and food near the Bayview marinas, and there is a dunk tank. A 2014 photograph from the street fair shows David Wane Sears setting out prizes at the fish pond game on July 5 of that year. The 2020 Press called the celebration one of the largest sources of income for the town’s small businesses along the lake, and shops have timed their openings to it. Tim and Deb Zabawa opened the Bayview Mercantile on June 30, 2014, just before Bayview Daze. Clint Beebe opened NORTHTREE in time for the 2021 edition and hosted ice cream, hamburger and brat vendors on its grounds. Deb Zabawa told the community newsletter Shore Lines: “During Bayview Daze 2021, we were steady all day, but the foot traffic was slower than previous years.”

Lights on Scenic Bay

The 2023 schedule set the lighted boat parade on Lake Pend Oreille at 9:30 p.m. and the fireworks at 10. In 2025 Lucas said: “I like the fireworks because we get to stay up until, like, 10. That’s like two hours past our bedtime.”

The 2016 program gave more detail. The night events that year fell on Sunday, July 3. A group from the Army National Guard Band, traveling from Boise and billed as the “rock” group, played on the lawn of Bayview Scenic Apartments from 8 p.m. until about 10. Local boats, decked out by their owners, paraded in Scenic Bay at 9. Ribbons went to the best light display, best music, best theme, best crowd reaction and best overall boat. The fireworks began at 10 over Scenic Bay. That year the chamber added the Remembrance Tribute, in which a person who had lost someone could buy a shell to be fired in that person’s honor. Organizers hoped it would become part of the annual tradition. “I think what I enjoy the most are the fireworks,” Knowles said that year, when she was the chamber’s vice president. “It’s like a culmination of the whole event.”

On the morning of the Fourth, the chamber serves a pancake breakfast at the Bayview Community Center. In 2016 it was called the Red, White, and Blue Pancake Breakfast and ran from 8 a.m. to about 10:30. In 2023 it started at 8:30 a.m.

Black Velvet in the front seat

On a cloudy Sunday in July 1995, the Bayview Daze antique boat contest drew wooden boats to the docks. The Spokesman-Review’s Richard Roesler reported that spectators crowded around a 1952 Century Resorter, restored from near decay, with a flower and a bottle of Black Velvet on the front seat. “I like the feel of taking something that’s going to crash, and bringing it back to life,” said co-owner Ed Todd, an electronics technician from Seattle. The Resorter won first prize. Only two wooden runabouts had docked, and third prize went to a boat whose owners were absent. “They’ll get the ribbon when they get out of the bar,” said judge Barry Siebert. “It’s ‘Bayview Daze’ for a reason.” Sam Silva of Bayview, who was restoring a 1947 Chris-Craft, explained why he watched: “I like the color and the warmth of the wood. Fiberglas just doesn’t do that.”

At a nearby slip, retired Spokane firefighter George Robinson coiled rope on the deck of the “No Problem.” It was a 32-foot fishing boat, afloat since 1910, when its owners gillnetted salmon in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Robinson had won prizes with it in earlier years but did not enter it in 1995. Moss grew between some of its planks, and concrete blocks sat below deck as ballast. “Full-out speed is 7 1/2 knots, but it’ll pull the dock,” he said. Nine years earlier he had found it leaning at a Bayview dock, leaking badly. “If I keep doing a little each year, it’ll probably see my grandchildren,” he said.

The Fancydoers and the homesteaders

In 2016 Knowles said the festival was started by a local women’s group called BAB. BAB is the Bayview-Athol-Belmont Women’s Club. According to a 2006 Spokesman-Review account, it began on July 24, 1956, when 15 women from the three communities met to raise money for local charities. Its first name was the BAB Fancydoers, and it was organized as a Kootenai County Extension Club. The club flower was the sweet pea, the club bird the mountain bluebird, and the club colors pink and blue. Edie Peck and LaVerne Rickel were founding members and were still active in 2006, when the club had more than 80 members. At that time its major fundraisers included a Fourth of July Bazaar held with Bayview Daze.

The 2010 celebration coincided with Bayview’s centennial. Correspondent Herb Huseland reported that the weather was cooler than usual and the crowds were large. The grand marshals were the Haddon family, honored as descendants of the first homesteaders in Bayview. Elmer E. Haddon and his wife, Ozelia, left Nebraska for the West in 1890. Haddon received the deed to a 160-acre timber claim in 1907, near where Merryweather Road now meets Perimeter Road. “This is really exciting, revisiting our great-grandfather’s homestead,” said John Haddon, the family historian. The centennial committee added a surprise entry, the Bayview Bygone Babes, who danced down the route with walkers. On Scenic Bay, Huseland saw a boat about 14 feet long carrying nine people, so heavily loaded it had almost no freeboard. Restaurants in town had more customers than they could serve.

In 2020 the chamber canceled the event, which the Press reported was the first year without it in 33 years. “Our top priority and the No. 1 reason (for canceling) is the health of our community,” said chamber president Will Stafford. He noted that older residents made up most of the volunteers. The chamber was also concerned about getting insurance for a fireworks show and about funding, and the pancake breakfasts that usually support the event were canceled because of COVID.

The chamber and local businesses have been the main sponsors, with collection cans around town and Uncle Sam’s bucket at the parade. In August 2026 the Captain’s Wheel held a spaghetti feed and dessert auction that raised more than $12,000 for Bayview Daze 2027. Taverna’s dinner with Sammy Eubanks raised $5,191. Artist Katrina Brennan donates work to the event every year. In fall 2026 the chamber’s website showed $25,500 raised toward a $40,000 goal for 2027.