With the Bell Tower Festival happening later this week in Jefferson, the committee has been hard at work getting things ready.

Committee member Emily Dyer is the vendor coordinator and says there will be 43 vendors lining Wilson Avenue and State Street in the downtown area, including 19 food trucks. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio how happy she is with the amount of food choices that people can enjoy and adds how more are coming this year.

“A lot of it was actually vendors who have come in the past, they’ve reached out to other vendors and they said, ‘Hey you should check out this show, like we really had a great time, we had a great turnout, and you guys should try it. I think you’d enjoy it.’ So a lot of my food trucks actually talked to one another and that’s kind of how I got the new food trucks. So I was really excited to hear the positive feedback.”

Dyer says some of the food choices include doughnuts, ice cream, Chinese, American, Mexican, among others. 

Bell Tower Festival Committee Chair Philip Heisterkamp says a returning attraction is going to be the carnival that saw success last year with “Gotcha Games” from Collins, Iowa.

“The number one requested thing of the festival and we found a good one (with Gotcha Games), and he’s coming back again with even more rides. Three additional rides from what we had last year. So again on Chestnut Street on the square will be jam packed with rides for kids and adults, there’s a lot of stuff for adults to do as well.”   

The vendors and the carnival will be open this Friday starting at 5pm and then on Saturday, the vendors will be open starting at noon with the carnival to be open beginning at 12:30pm.