Festival at Mount Si is gearing up for another big weekend in North Bend, Aug. 12 to 14, with new events and old favorites.

Jill Massengill, chairperson of Festival at Mount Si, said one of the big new elements to this year’s festival are events celebrating the 25th anniversary of Twin Peaks.

The anniversary celebrations begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday with the Twin Peaks Trivia Contest at the beer garden. On Saturday at 2 p.m. the Damn Fine Cup of Coffee contest will be held at the community stage.

“Local coffee shops are submitting their drip coffee and we will have judges and taste test the different local coffees,” Massengill said.

Following the coffee tasting, Twede’s Cafe will put on its crowd-pleasing cherry-pie eating contest.

At 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, one of Twin Peaks memorable moments, Tibetan Rock Throwing, will be turned into a field game. Running all weekend is a Twin Peaks scavenger hunt with items hidden across the entire festival grounds.

“One of the gals on our committee, Mary Hutter, is a major Twin Peaks fan. She is on the committee for the Twin Peaks festival, I asked her if she would be willing to help with some events and she was very open and enthusiastic, she was the one who came up with most of the events,” she said.

Aside from the Twin Peaks events, Festival at Mount Si will also be expanding its field games, taking the place of the children’s inflatable play areas this year.

“Another pretty major change this year is somewhat unfortunate. The vendor we are using to provide bouncy houses, is no longer offering the same contract, we have had for years, because of the new contract the liability increases immensely and we are no longer able to afford the liability insurance,” she said. “Anything inflatable is $2,000 per ride in addition to the rental fees. We would have to charge a crazy amount of money to even be close to breaking even.”

This led the festival organizers to expand the field games, offering laser tag on Friday and Saturday among other attractions.

“We have bubble soccer. It’s hilarious and fun, we will have a climbing wall and new carnival games, a petting zoo on Sunday, hayrides in the park as well. Lawn twister, the grass is painted to be a giant twister game, and a new four on four basketball tournament,” she said. “We feel like we have done a good job offering a bunch of fun.”

Several old favorites will be returning to the festival as well including the wife-carrying competition and the chili cook-off.

There will also be some changes to regular events, including the parade. The start location has changed to Torguson Park instead of Cedar Falls Way. Massengill said the addition of a new neighborhood in the area has increased traffic, no longer making it an ideal place to line up for the parade.

The rest of the parade route will remain the same for the two parades. At 10:15 a.m., the Kiddie Parade will begin, followed at 10:30 by the Grand Parade.

The silent auction is also different this year. The auction was held early this spring and will be replaced by a raffle during the event. The auction was moved because the workload to run it alongside the festival was too much for the volunteers.

“Usually we offer a silent auction. This year we decided to move it to the spring and launched a community service scholarship in addition to that, then we are going to host a raffle during the festival instead,” Massengill said. “Putting the auction on during the festival is really different. The community is split and busy with other stuff, the bulk of the work lands on one person and gets crazy.”

Massengill is very appreciative of all the time and work that goes into the festival from volunteers and wants to encourage anyone who enjoys the festival to consider volunteering to help make the festival as good as it can be.

“It takes a lot of volunteers to make this event happen,” she said. “and I would love to encourage people who appreciate the event to considered helping out and volunteering.”