Photo by Sabrina Pankratz BMX rider, AJ Haines, flipped his bike during the BMX Mega Jump Stunt Show Saturday at Clarkfield’s Cardinal Days.

CLARKFIELD — The BMX Mega Jump Motivational Experience group put on quite the stunt show fo audience at the 5th annual Clarkfield Cardinal Days on Saturday.

Dustin Grice, co-founder of the group and announcer for the evening, said he’s been doing shows for about 20-plus years, and they do about 100 shows just in Minnesota.

“Over the years, you can’t count how many shows we’ve done in Minnesota, I would say thousands. Even at the Minnesota State Fair alone we’re out there every single day, seven shows, every day,” said Grice.

Grice and riders, AJ Haines, Alex Hiltunen, and Jeremiah Hunter, gave out autographs and talked to kids after the show.

“It’s really fun and good for the kids,” said Adam Laughlin, who came to Clarkfield Cardinal Days from Willmar.

“It’s great, and my favorite part (are the) parades. Parades are the best. It’s a blast, you got people on both sides and doing what we normal do, just riding in the street, and now you get to perform in front of people and just have fun riding bikes,” said Grice.

Other events, such as caricatures, bouncy houses, free swimming, bingo, and live music by Sheltered Reality, Radio Acoustic, and Charlie Roth went on throughout the afternoon to late evening.

“I like listening to the music,” said Cindy Anderson of Clarkfield.

Katie Kaatz, one of the Clarkfield Prairie Cardinal members, said Clarkfield Cardinals Days started five years ago after the Heart of the Prairie Days organizing group disbanded.

“So we didn’t have anything for a few years, and then a group of us got together and said we wanted to bring back the town celebration, and now this is our 5th year,” Kaatz said.

Planning for the event starts a year ahead of time.

“Basically we do it every July, and the planning takes place in August. We talk about what went well for this year and what didn’t go well, things we want to do differently. We think of things we want add in for next year. Basically its a year-round thing where we are constantly thinking and looking for new or fun things to do,” said Kaatz.

Due to early morning thunderstorms events like the grand parade and Cardinal Car Show were postponed to the afternoon, but it didn’t stop the community from participating in this year’s events.

“(My favorite part is) just the day of seeing all the community members and their families interacting with one another,” said Kaatz.

“It’s a growing little thing y’know with what they started with. People like to come, just a small community thing, our parade really grew this year,” Anderson said.