It was a dilly of a day for the N.C. Pickle Festival

Simply put, Saturday, April 29, was a dilly of a day as tens of thousands of people shoehorned themselves into downtown Mount Olive for the 37th annual N.C. Pickle Festival.

They came for the wealth of free entertainment, classic car show, events and activities, food and arts and crafts vendors, pickle-centric events such as a pickle-eating contest and pickle-packing competition and, of course, free Mt. Olive pickles.

That love and desire for pickles was summed up by a pregnant Brittany Klepeisz’s T-shirt message “The Bump Wants a Pickle.”

It was underscored as well by her 3-year-old son Michael, who made quick work of his first Mt. Olive pickle and started on his second in a manner that could have won him a spot in the Pickle Eating Contest

“She is pregnant and due in September,” said her husband Matt. “She found out about the Pickle Festival several years ago and has talked about this being a bucket list item for her.

“She is very excited to be here.

The family, including 6-year-old daughter Grace, drove three hours Friday from their home in Chesapeake, Va. They stayed in Smithfield before heading to the Pickle Festival on Saturday.

“He loves pickles,” Klepeisz said of his son.

Their first stop was the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. booth on North Center where free pickles were being handed out.

“We haven’t stepped in to see the car show or anything,” he said. “There is so much going on; it’s fantastic.”

They were joined by Michael’s and Grace’s grandparents, Gerri and John Klepeisz of Yorktown, Va., who said they have been planning for the trip since January.

They said they wanted to find the Pickle Train and antique tractors.

“We want to see all of them and basically just see what is all out here and eat some pickles,” John Klepeisz said. “Our new granddaughter wants to eat some pickles. Yeah, the baby bump.

Coordinated by the North Carolina Pickle Festival, Inc. in partnership with the Mount Olive Area Chamber of Commerce, the award-winning festival was held from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, April 28, and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 29, in downtown Mount Olive.

Entertainment was spread across three stages — a dance stage, praise stage and band stage.

More than 200 vehicles lined both sides of North Center Street in the Wayne County Cruisers Car Show.

Vendors lined both sides of a four-block stretch of Center Street as well as along side streets and in the alleyway between West James and West Main Streets.

Vendors sold a variety of foods and those with pickle-flavored items sported special banners advertising those foods.

There were plenty of arts and crafts vendors and local church, civic and other groups were set up as well.

Carnival rides and games were set up and a special area was dedicated to children’s activities.

As of publication time, there was no estimate on crowd size, although it is thought to have been somewhat less than last year’s estimated 60,000.

“I think we certainly had a huge crowd,” festival co-chair Julie Beck said Saturday. “But I think it was slightly less than what we had last year which is not a bad thing because we had so many people last year. It was still very crowded even though we expanded the footprint. But we added more vendors so we were kind of right back at square one again.

“We had more vendors, but we had a lot and a lot of people so you didn’t notice that it really expanded because of that reason. But it was a huge crowd. I don’t know number wise, but I would say slightly less than what we had last year, but not by a lot.”

Beck said she had spoken to people from Missouri, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, even from Canada and California who told her they came to Mount Olive specifically for the festival.

Several told her that they actually drove four or five hours on Saturday just for the festival.

That is a testament to the festival’s popularity, Beck said.

“I think that the festival has a great reputation, and it’s a unique concept,” she said. “I think the more we have a social media presence out there, the more people are finding out about the festival and it’s clearly that people love pickles.

“If you just looked at the different attire that people wear, all the different stuff people wear, I think people like the uniqueness of it. What we try to do is make sure that we’re not just your normal festival. We’ve got those unique pickle aspects — all those picklely foods and picklely activities.

That is what Beck thinks is the drawing card.

This year the festival added “Picklelicious” banners to draw attention to food vendors that had pickle foods.

Every one of those vendors said that they loved the banners and that they drew a lot of traffic to their booths, Beck.

They said as well that the first items they sold out of were the pickle-flavored foods.

There were no major issues or problems, Beck said.

“We always have a few little challenges in the morning just trying to work out some of the kinks,” she said. “As you you know, we’ve added some different little new elements this year.

“So that was just trying to figure out all of that was incorporated and how we’re going to do some things, but nothing major.”

Beck said that is particularly true in the scheme of things based on what it takes to set up the festival and how many attend.

One hiccup involved the QR codes that festival-goers could scan. The idea was that the scan would take them to a map.

However, it took people to a page that required them to register before proceeding.

That issue will be worked on for next year to hopefully eliminate that step, she said.

Another change was having vendors check-in at Mount Olive Family Medicine Center instead of downtown.

Beck said that change resulted in the smoothest check-in the festival has ever had.

Another change was to close Center Street to traffic by 5 p.m. Friday.

Friday night’s events ran smoothly, too.

Beck said she was pleasantly surprised because she had been preparing herself for the bad weather that had been predicted earlier in the week.

“We thought that we were going get rained out,” Beck said. “I think Friday night was great. We had a good turnout with the Cuke Patch 5K. We had a lot of kids coming out riding the carnival rides, and we had a decent crowd for the for the concert.

“So the fact that I got my Friday night activities was just icing on the cake.”

Saturday started off a bit foggy which delayed the start of helicopter rides, but then the weather cleared and overall it was good, she added.

Beck said she and festival Co-chair Lynn Williams talked at the end of the day and that both were very happy and pleased with festival.

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Andrew Jaragoske, 6, was enjoying chicken on a stick while his sister Amelia, 9, was eating noodles.

They are the children of Jill and Bryan of Fayetteville

“We are a military family,” Jill Jaragoske said. “We live at Fort Bragg. This is our third time back and we have always heard about it (festival) and this is the first year we have been able to attend.

“We just wanted something fun to do on the weekend and this was definitely something fun and unique. We are enjoying seeing all of the vendors and car show, pickle things. It has been really fun.”

They had seen half of the car show and planned to go back to check out the other half, she added.

“We are looking forward to that,” she said. “I want to find the pickle cotton candy is what we are talking about.

“We have had fun and it turned out to be a really beautiful day. We are having a real good time.”

—Among the festival volunteers were Joe and Paula Oliverio, friends of Beck, who drove down from Belmont, West Virginia.

“They had never been to the festival,” Beck said. “They had only heard about from Julie Beck. They not only enjoyed the festival, but volunteered.”

Joe Oliverio said he and his wife have been trying to attend the festival for several years.

“We have always heard about this festival being the big dill and wanted to make sure that we had a time to get to it,” he said. “So our schedules worked out, and we came in Friday, got to participate in the activities and then just to see it Saturday was like we just kept looking at each other like’ man, this is a whole lot bigger than what we thought it was.’”

Oliverio said he is sure many people have been to other festivals where they go in and there are 10 to 12 vendors and they think “wow, this is this a pretty nice deal.”

“The work and energy that she (Beck) puts into it with her little band of volunteers is a great resource for the township, the town, the community and the Chamber,” he said. “It surpassed the expectations.”

Oliverio said they were fortunate to help with Pickle Festival shirt sales in the Chamber information booth.

“This festival is an amazing festival and it’s an awful lot of hard work for Julie and it was an honor to share the event with her,” he said.

Paula Oliverio said Beck had done a good job explaining things about the festival to them.

They knew about the Pickle Eating Contest and that Mt. Olive Pickle Co. gave out free pickles, she said.

“So we sort of expected those kinds of things and knew there were vendors,” she added. “But we had no idea how huge this festival was.”

They knew that the town was a small area, similar in size to where they live, she added.

“So I think because of that, I was expecting this to be a much smaller event,” she said.

The Pickle Festival obviously is a major source of income to the businesses because of all the people coming in are stopping to buy gas, buying some food, stopping to buy snacks on the way out of town, Oliverio said.

“So the influx of all of that to this small area has got to be, you know, phenomenal,” she said. “What a great time we had. This won’t be our last Pickle Festival.

“We appreciate the fact that the people here were just so welcoming, just willing to let us jump in and help out. We were thrilled to be a part of that.”

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Twins Ashlynn and Amara Henderson, 2, were snacking on cotton candy as their mother Corrine Toro of Jacksonville pulled them in a wagon.

“This is our first time at the Pickle Festival,” she said. “My friend who is with us makes it an every year thing with her kids. She invited us along with them. We just got here not too long ago so we have been walking around checking out the tents.

“We got some cotton candy already and we came over to listen to some music. It is definitely a huge crowd. They love pickles so we had to come.”

Toro said Ashlynn loves pickles, too.

“She wakes up every morning asking for a pickle when she sees the refrigerator open,” she said.

But Saturday she was sampling cotton candy for the first time.