Not even a little rain was enough to deter people from enjoying the various booth, duck a nice Sunday at the 11th annual Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival.
by Matt Konkle
Managing Editor
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. — On and off again showers finally caught up with the 11th annual Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival crowd Sunday.
Not really enough to dampen anyone’s spirits as they cruised from booth to booth, talking with anyone from the Jeep aftermarket’s biggest vendors to small jewelry spots, beef jerky locations, phone providers, candlemakers, T-shirt makers and a host of others at the event.
Of course, the Jeep Playground, Jeeps Throughout History exhibit, military encampment and Jeep Team Challenge were all still available, and plenty of Jeeps rolled over the rocky and muddy playground course, as well as the team challenge.
For day three at Bantam, we spent quite a bit of time walking around the Jeep Team Challenge course and watching different participants attack the different contests. This attraction is essentially a series of six ‘games’ a Jeep’s driver and passengers play over a winding, slopy and bumpy course.
Each game involves either grabbing or hitting targets, pouring water from a pan into a bottle, driving as straight as possible over a small chain while counting objects on the side of the trail and reversing as close as possible to an oil drum.
While it possible to do the course with just a driver and passenger, it certainly helps to have rear occupants who can help out with certain game aspects. For example, the first challenge requires occupants to grab rings staked up on the trailside. Some are larger than others and each driver is required to maneuver as close to the stakes as possible to snatch with a handheld device. And that device needs to be passed from side to side depending on where the stakes are set, so having rear occupants definitely makes the overall task easier.
One of the later locations asks those inside the Jeep to toss pool noodles through rings along the trailside. The more passengers, the easier to navigate that course and succeed.
Following each location, each Jeep received a point score depending on how they fared. Additionally, before each stop, occupants were asked various Jeep trivia questions to gain additional points.
While we’re sure some groups were super competitive, each one we watched on Sunday simply had fun on the course and squeals of fun echoed through the grass.
From there, we met up with Allison Parliament, founder of #DuckDuckJeep and founder of the whole Jeep duck movement.
Parliament, who holds dual United States/Canadian citizenship, first started her venture in the throws of the pandemic following her return to Canada in July of 2020 after spending time with her parents in Alabama.
While traveling to her home in Washago, Onterio, she was assaulted at a rest stop when someone saw her Alabama license plate, and was told she wasn’t welcome in Canada.
”It was an interaction that scared me,” Parliament said. “So rather than focusing on the hate and stupid, we chose to focus on kindness.”
After returning home and then visiting her extended family, Parliament bought a bag of ducks and began leaving them around the house to make her companion laugh.
Also, as she walked out of the store with the ducks, she saw a nicely built Jeep and decided to leave a duck on the vehicle.
”I had a permanent marker on me, so I decided to write ‘Nice Jeep’ on the duck and I figured what the heck, might as well make someone laugh,” Parliament said. “Turns out the guy that owned the Jeep was watching me and came over to see what I was doing. He started cracking up and said we need to put this on social media.”
And the whole #DuckDuckJeep trend took off from that point.
”In a couple of hours we had 2,000 followers,” she said. “In 10 days we had 10,000 followers.”
Since then, Parliament estimates she has given away 20,000 ducks in her travels around Canada and the United States. Not to mention the inspiration that has led to countless others leaving all kinds of ducks on peoples’ Jeeps.
Her non-profit Facebook group at Official Ducking Jeeps Est. 2020 even holds raffles and giveaways to raise money for a teachers’ fund — where educators can contact the group to apply for $50-$100 to help buy supplies for their classrooms.
“No teacher should have to choose between our children/our future and the money they need at home,” Parliment said.
After she made her way to a duck signing session, we headed back to the Jeep playground and joined scores of others in the grandstands watching so many Jeep owners blast their vehicles through the mud pit — enjoying the different rocky obstacles.
From there, it was time to wave goodbye to another fun and successful Bantam Heritage Jeep Invasion event.
