Visit St. Cloud Readies For Busy Summer

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) - As the snow continues to melt, and the grass greens up, thoughts are turning to spring and summer activities happening throughout St. Cloud.

Rachel Thompson, the Executive Director of Visit Greater St. Cloud was a guest on WJON’s “Rush Hour” to run through some of the highlights of a very busy summer season.

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The Earth Day Run 2024:

The Earth Day Run happens on April 19th and 20th. The schedule of events has changed slightly, and Thompson believes that will lead to more runners in the races.

That is the hope. We were talking about planning and (previous participants) had mentioned if a 5k participant could also run in the half. And (we) don't see a lot of that overlap. They're seeing most people that are intended to only run the half are only intended to run that 5k. So it's great to get them all across that starting line and finish line on the same day.

The events kick off Friday, April 19th with the Health and Wellness Expo running all day with race packet pickup, and the Microbiologics Kid’s 1K run at 6:30.

Saturday, April 20th, the Bernick’s Half Marathon and Half Marathon Relay begin at 8:30, with the Granite Partners 5K Walk/Run and the 5K Corporate Challenge beginning at 9:00.

Restaurant Week 2024:

The St. Cloud Area Restaurant Week is May 13th through the 19th. It’s a week dedicated to St. Cloud’s best restaurants and a challenge for those restaurants to bring their best menu options to be judged.

Thompson says they have already begun working with participating restaurants.

Our categories this year are confections, handhelds (anything that you can hold and eat), wings and wantons, gluten-friendly, hot to trot (which is all your spicy food), and guilty pleasures. Restaurants get to submit one menu item for one of those categories, which poses a challenge for most people because there's a menu item that they could submit for every category or multiples for each category. But the challenge is they have to pick one menu item to be known for in the restaurant week.

Everyone will be able to try the featured items and be eligible for $50 restaurant gift card giveaways every day.

The Senior Games:

The Minnesota Senior Games are in St. Cloud from August 15th through the 18th. Officials say the annual competition for men and women 50 years of age and older features more than 15 different sports.

Thompson says the St. Cloud area is proud to host the games this year.

We've got over 15 sports and you can do five of them in one single registration. If you're a swimmer, you can swim every single heat and that counts as one sport. So you can have five sports with a single registration.

Winners of the games will qualify for the National Senior Games in Des Moines, Iowa in 2025.

For a complete list of activities in the St. Cloud Area, find the Visit Greater St. Cloud website here.

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