The co-winners of the 2019 Festival Medallion Quest are Salinans Gwenna Reich and her daughter Tara Sauber.
Reich found the 2019 Medallion at about 9:30a on Tuesday, June 4 in a fountain in Sunset Park. The Medallion itself was a metal tube. The tube was attached by a line to a rock resting on the rock wall of the fountain in the Sunset Park. Attached to the rock was a branch that was floating in the water.
Reich and Sauber have Quested before and were taking turns searching in recent days. Sauber texted Reich at about 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, asking if Reich could babysit, as Sauber felt they were getting close. Sauber searched from 5:30 a.m. on, until she had to go to work, then Reich went back out and was checking various spots in Sunset Park. Reich said, “I hunted the back trails in the park for a long time – we thought it was perhaps a rock or an arrowhead.”
The mother-daughter duo are the 14th winners of the Festival Medallion Quest that was started in 2009 by the Smoky Hill River Festival. The Festival Medallion Quest’s goal is to foster creativity and connectivity in a way that reflects the spirit of the River Festival.
The 2019 Quest took five days in its brand-new format of two levels of play, with a first round of six written clues, each leading to a separate Token prize. The six subsequently revealed visual clues led to the Medallion. This year, the fifth of the six Tokens was not found by any Questers.
In 2018, the “old” or former style of Medallion Quest lasted for nine days. The 2018 Medallion, found by Lynn Brown Larsen and Melody Hoeffner, was a custom-designed cassette tape and box, hidden near a trail in Indian Rock Park. In 2017, winner Eric Carlson found a tree bark-shaped Medallion off of east Cloud Street in the River Woods Nature Trail, a newer Salina park.
To view the full set of Festival Medallion Quest clues, go to festivalmedallionquest.com and click on the “Play” page at https://www.festivalmedallionquest.com/play-quest
Co-winners Gwenna Reich and Tara Sauber receive a prize package of $1,000 in cash and $1,000 in gift certificates to be used for shopping at the River Festival 2019 Fine Art and Craft Show. Other prizes include four Festival admission buttons, a complimentary on-grounds Festival parking pass, an invitation for four to the new Thursday-evening PREMIERE Art Patron party, four Festival T-shirts and more.
The Smoky Hill River Festival, now in its 43rd year, is the flagship event of Salina Arts & Humanities, a department of the City of Salina. The River Festival draws about 60,000 local residents and
out-of-town guests each year to Salina to enjoy outdoor art installations, the Fine Art and Craft Show, four stages of live entertainment, the Artyopolis kid’s area, Festival food and more. The River Festival generates approximately $3.5 million in revenue in May and June.
Advance-price Festival admission Buttons are available online until the close of day on Tuesday, June 11 at 41 Salina locations and un 17 other regional cities. Children 11 and under get in FREE.
For more information on the Festival Medallion Quest or the Smoky Hill River Festival, call 785-309-5770 or visit riverfestival.com.
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