Clallam Bay/Sekiu Fun Days

On the Friday afternoon of the 2026 Fun Days, the street fair opened in the bus barn parking lot in Clallam Bay with fair-style lemonade and chicken street tacos on the menu. That year more vendors set up in the front field up at the school, the first time the fair had spread there. The festival is held the second weekend in July in downtown Clallam Bay and at the Sekiu Community Center, 42 Rice St., in Clallam County. The 2026 edition fell on July 10, 11 and 12. Donations from the community pay for it, and the committee keeps most activities free or low in cost. In 2026 it announced that it had become “a official 501C Foundation.”

Friday at the bus barn

The art show opens Friday morning in the Sekiu Community Center and stays up all weekend, with intricate crafts and quilts by people of the two towns. The 2026 festival also mounted “Moments That Made Us: Americas 250th,” an exhibit on how generations of Americans have given meaning to the ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence. The Friends of the Library sold new and gently used books at the Clallam Bay branch on state Highway 112.

At 5 p.m. the town gathers at the bus barn for the community potluck, which opens Fun Days. Everyone brings a dish and shares dinner. In 2026 volunteers stepped forward to bring the potluck back. In the same hour the Brian Waite Band, billed as “Adventurous Rock ‘n Roll,” played a family concert outdoors at the library. At 7 p.m. the evening moved downstairs in the Sekiu Community Hall for a night of local trivia.

Log trucks on parade day

Saturday starts on bicycles. Riders sign up in front of the school at 8:30 a.m., and at 9 they set out in pairs around town to find playing cards. The best poker hand wins a prize. At 11 the parade begins. An honor guard leads, then comes the kiddie parade, then the grand parade, with candy, cars, floats, a fire twirler, and log trucks that honk at the crowd.

In 2026 the Clallam County Sheriff, the Coast Guard color guard from Neah Bay, and honored veterans led the way. For America’s 250th the committee had asked residents to nominate local veterans and active-duty members for recognition in the parade, whether or not they could attend. Karolyn and John Burdick were the Grand Pioneers. Gary Tiveit brought the Rainier Beer truck, and Rainee Signor twirled a flame-lit baton. A Candy Land entry went by. The 1937 Chevy log truck of Singhose Logging of Joyce rolled the route once again, as Lonnie Archibald photographed it for the Forks Forum.

After the parade the program spreads across town. A live auction is held in the bus barn. The True North Dance Team gives a free line-dancing performance at the school. At the corner of the bus barn, the Bucket Dump lets anyone throw a ball and tip a bucket of water onto a volunteer’s head. It was a new fundraiser in 2026, and the committee suggested candidates on Facebook: “a local sports referee, teacher, or maybe just a family member.”

In the Clallam Bay High School Big Gym, teams of ninth graders to adults played the second annual 3-on-3 basketball tournament in 2026, with hoodies for the winners and T-shirts for second place. The gym’s food table sold Indian tacos, nachos, pulled pork rice and baked goods. In front of the school, children raced an inflatable obstacle course, which had replaced the foam activity first planned for that year. The North Olympic Salmon Coalition taught visitors to identify native plants at the library. From 5 to 8 p.m. the Beer Bellied Sneeches, with guest singers, played in front of the Bay Cafe in Sekiu.

The year’s raffle is drawn on Saturday. In 2026 the prize was a Kimono quilt made by Mary Kay Michelena, at $1 a ticket, with the proceeds going to the events and the fireworks. Three local children won the art competition: Alessa Dalos, 12, Annabelle Lock-Chase, 11, and Hunter Halvorsen, 10. Their pictures went onto $1 buttons, each numbered on the back for prize drawings. Each year’s logo also comes from a local artist and is printed on that year’s shirts and sweatshirts. They are sold from the blue Fundays trailer parked at the bus barn.

Fireworks over the bay

The schedule sets the fireworks for 10 p.m. Saturday, “starting at dark.” For many West End residents, Zorina Barker wrote in the Peninsula Daily News in 2017, the free display is the best part of Fun Days. Her column describes that year’s show from start to finish.

Down on the beach beside state Highway 112, which connects Clallam Bay and Sekiu, the show begins early. Families build campfires along the shoreline. Packs of children and teenagers set off their families’ supplies of fireworks, all of them yelling at once. Adults sit by the fires and talk, and a few people splash in the surf. Barker wrote that the main smell was black-powder sulfur, with a faint trace of citronella against the mosquitoes. As dark comes on, the bottle rockets give way to louder explosions and higher colors. From the small jetty in front of the Breakwater Restaurant, an opening act went up. When the big bangs sounded from across the bay in Sekiu, every other explosion stopped.

Olson’s Resort has traditionally been the main sponsor of the advertised show. Its owner, Brandon Mason, said the resort’s 800-foot jetty was “strung from end to end” all day. Donations pay for the show. In 2017 fishing regulations had cut into business, and West End people wondered whether there would be much of a show at all. “We have had a lot more donations from the fishermen who come from all over Washington,” Mason said. “They have really stepped up and filled the void.” Tracy Bloom of Tracy’s Insulation Inc. in Sequim was among the biggest donors. Three entities, among them the Makah tribe, helped run the show.

After 40 minutes there was a short lull. People started for their cars, holding their blankets and chairs and figuring the show had already run longer than usual. Then the colors kept coming until the whole surface of the bay was lit. Lights moved like fuzzy rainbows across the timbered hillside behind the resort. The big show ended after 11 p.m., and the beach was still going strong.

On Sunday the weekend closes at the Toast and Jam Pub, 31 Frontier St., with the double-elimination cribbage tournament named for Pop Maneval. The entry fee is $5. The 5K Fun Run that usually goes out from the fire station on Sunday morning was canceled in 2026.

A loggers’ day off

Fun Days began as a “loggers day off,” organizer Patricia Hutson told the Peninsula Daily News in 2008. “It was a day for all those hard working loggers to have a play day,” she said. By then it had become a time for family and community reunions in the two neighboring towns. Hutson estimated that 500 to 1,000 people would come each day. She said Clallam Bay and Sekiu had for years held a belated Fourth of July because of the festivities in neighboring communities. “Because we have it close to the Fourth of July, we always coordinate with Forks and Port Angeles to make sure that our events won’t be on the same weekends.”

The festival website keeps a photo album of past years, with pictures from 1981, 1985, 1987, 1993, 1994, 2002, 2004 and 2022. The photographers of the older ones are unknown. One of the art show’s longtime exhibitors was June Elizabeth (Doran) Bowlby. She was born at home on the west end of Sekiu in 1932, and her father was boom boss in the company town. She helped found the Messy Palettes art group in Sekiu and entered her last Sekiu Fun Days Art Show at 91. She died at home on the Pysht River on March 24, 2025.

The town’s own past has a place on the program. At 7:30 p.m. on the 2026 Saturday, between the music and the fireworks, Karolyn Burdick and Larry Burtness gave a talk in the bottom of the Sekiu Community Center. Their subject was the fire of March 17, 1947, which burned down most of Clallam Bay. The talk had been left off the printed schedule and was announced on Facebook a week ahead. Hutson’s account of who comes back each July still describes the crowd: “If someone left the area, they usually come back for Fun Days.”