Thousands of people came to the Herndon Festival over the weekend for rides, games and community spirit. Photo by Reena Singh.
Carnival rides, kettle corn and a 10-foot-tall Uncle Sam in downtown Herndon can only mean one thing: it’s Herndon Festival.
The 34th annual festival brought visitors from throughout the county into town from May 29 to June 1.
“It’s becoming one of the most interesting festivals in Northern Virginia, maybe even in the greater D.C. area,” said festival creator Arno Randall.
Randall has seen the festival flourish from taking up two streets to now taking over downtown Herndon.
“If you stop for a moment, you see smiles on everyone’s faces,” he said. “It’s meant to be a good family-friendly festival to make people feel good about the community they live in.”
In the next week or two, the festival committee will pour over photos and talk about their observations to determine an estimate for the number of people who came to this year’s event.
“Ten thousand people came the first year,” he said. “We’ve been blessed with excellent weather. The crowd was larger than usual, I believe.”
He said the secret to creating such a successful festival is in the details.
Sara Kimbrell, Fairfax, said she brings her family to the festival nearly every year. Her daughters, Jamie and Lainey, loved the teacup ride where they swung their seats wildly around and around.
“My sister lives in Herndon,” said Sara. “It’s nice that it’s a free festival, that we can at least get admission for free.”
Lisa Hulen, Potomac Falls, said she noticed the festival when she cycled through the town recently.
“It looked like it would be a lot of fun for him,” she said, pointing at her 8-year-old son Sean.
They were in line to go on the Ferris wheel, but he was the most excited about going on centrifugal force ride called “High Energy.”
“It seems very well organized,” said Hulen. “We were able to ride the shuttle here from the free parking area, which was nice.”
If it seemed that there was a lot of police present at the festival - there was. According to Herndon Police Department’s Capt. Brad Anzengruber, it was not just HPD that was there. Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department, Virginia Police Department, Northern Virginia Task Force and Herndon Police Support Team were all represented at the festival.
“It’s a great chance to interact with the public,” said Capt. Anzengruber. “You have to provide a safe environment for people to enjoy themselves.”
He said there were no serious incidents at this year’s festival.
“We’ve rescued more lost children than anything else we’ve been doing,” he said.