by Christopher Johnson
The Easter Bunny may have had to ditch his usual flight plan this year, but he still made the long haul to Clare. This past weekend, while adults were waking up to the wildest tweets ever tweeted, kids were enjoying a wholesome couple of days hunting for eggs, meeting the Bunny, and looting easter baskets. Even with a lousy forecast, the spirit of the holiday was very evident in and around town. Here’s a few highlights in case you stayed home where it was warm.
Easter EGGstravaganza at Clare Municipal Airport
The city’s Annual Great EGGstravaganza hit a snag Saturday when rainy weather grounded the small planes that traditionally drop over 1,000 eggs from the air over a crowd of waiting kids. It’s the kind of spectacle that makes the event an anticipated Clare tradition. Unfortunately, rain and wind chill put a literal damper on the event, yielding a lower attendance than previous years.
Parks and Recreation Coordinator Joy Simmer and her volunteers adapted on the fly, swapping the aerial drop for an egg roll and moving activities inside a nearby hangar to keep families dry. The Easter Bunny, for his part, made a ground-level entrance instead.
“He hopped into town that morning, got everything ready, and made sure that the event was still egg-stra special,” Simmer said.
Special guests included Miss Michigan Teen USA 2025 Eliy Simmer. In addition to being the field’s flagger, she joined the festivities alongside families who turned out despite the weather. Some of those activities included the usual yard games, limbo bar, hula hoops and coloring stations. While Sound Productions offered a proper dance party playlist for anybody looking to move around and warm up.
The egg hunt format remained intact, with specially marked prize eggs redeemable for various prizes mixed in among the traditional candy-filled plastic eggs. Each age group’s hunt featured one golden egg—the most coveted find of the morning—redeemable for an Easter basket assembled and donated by Ponderosa of Clare, complete with goodies and a dinner voucher for a family of four. Jay’s Sporting Goods added a fishing pole to the golden egg prize as well.
Simmer, who runs Clare Parks and Recreation as a one-person department, credited the event’s resilience to the volunteers and community partners who make it possible year after year.
“It takes a lot of work behind the scenes to pull events and programs together,” she said, “especially when Mother Nature throws us a water balloon.”
Easter Bunny at Cops & Doughnuts
Meanwhile at Cops and Doughnuts, The Easter Bunny sat for their last couple photo ops on Friday and Saturday. From noon to 2 PM, families were encouraged to bring their kiddos for one last chance to meet the big, friendly, furry giant.
Cops’ have been hosting the Bunny as early as March 22 and has since been hopping in almost every weekend for a chance to mingle. In terms of turnout, the first Sunday was decent. The second Sunday was better, and Good Friday was the lowest. But that’s fine because the Bunny had time to slide on line and help cook a batch of donuts.
“It was good to get the people out,” says Greg Rynearson, president of Cops’. “It was good to get them out and about, coming in, and also the involvement across town—the collaboration has been great.”
By that, he is referring to the egg hunt hosted by Blanche and Mabel’s. Who was working with their neighbors tightly across the street to encourage involvement in their daily hunt. Whose young winners were announced via social media.
There was no shortage of treats to suit the weekend’s occasion.
Chocolate-dipped cupcakes crowned with sculpted fondant Easter bunnies. Cookies iced in soft springtime colors—pale blue, lavender, yellow and pink—finished with festive sprinkles. A sheet cake decorated with purple rosettes and a hand-piped fondant Easter egg in rainbow stripes. Hot cross buns lined up in rows alongside trays of frosted cookies and a full case of assorted doughnuts.
Hard spread to beat.
Bakery staff are anticipating an influx of foot traffic as warm weather keeps hinting to be around the corner. The Cops’ team sees this weekend as a seasonal milestone and is preparing to become much busier as things start to bloom in the coming weeks.
An aside: More than a handful of people around town were plenty convinced about the fleet of Tesla patrol vehicles that had supposedly been donated to the police department. Some good April tomfoolery from the Cops’ social media page. When it comes to pranking an audience, AI will undoubtedly continue to come in handy.
Farwell Easter Eggstravaganza
Farwell’s Easter Eggstravaganza drew more than 250 community members despite the same uncooperative weather that tested Clare’s celebration the same weekend, and by most accounts it delivered anyway. Village of Farwell Parks and Recreation Coordinator Ellie Theisen called it the best the event has been.
“Despite weather that was not fully in our favor, the Easter Eggstravaganza turned out to be the best we could have hoped for,” Theisen said.
Families showed up to egg hunts, bounce houses, bingo with prizes, coloring stations, donuts, photos with the Easter Bunny, and 15 raffle baskets donated by local businesses. Bike giveaways rounded out a lineup that Theisen said had something for every age group (0-4, 5-7, 8-12). Children took home goodie bags in addition to whatever they pulled from the egg hunts.
New this year was the Easter Egg Dash, a week-long addition that sent families door to door throughout the community to collect eggs rather than concentrating everything into a single afternoon. Theisen said the format was a deliberate attempt to spread foot traffic to local shops while giving families flexibility to participate on their own schedule. Each day, a large, purple egg was hidden and found by a new kiddo and announced via social media.
The event leaned heavily on volunteer and sponsor support, which Theisen credited for making the scale of the day possible.
“The only thing I would’ve changed was the weather,” she said, “but it’s Michigan, and giving kids an Easter is what’s important.”
