Rather than canceling their annual Baby Animal Days fundraiser, staff at the American West Heritage Center in Wellsville came up with some creative solutions to adhere to social distancing guidelines.
“The first thing is we're just not having contact, we're definitely remaining compliant with the six foot distance. suggested for social distancing," said Sarah Gunnell. "We're asking all of our guests to purchase their tickets online. And so when they get here, they're just checking in using that code or their last name to check in and there's no contact, we're not taking money, credit cards, anything. And then as they're driving through the site, they're just staying in their vehicles with their families. We're asking them to keep their windows rolled up, and there's just no personal contact during the event.”
Sarah Gunnell, the American West Heritage office manager, said she and her team worked very closely with Bear River Health Department to keep Baby Animal Days alive. Together they came up with some guidelines and switched from a walk-through to a drive-through event.
Despite the challenges, Gunnell said the event is not much different than what you would see if you were going to walk around the grounds.
“We have all of our baby farm animal. We have our calves and we have a baby lamb and goats and thanks to America first credit union, we have the baby bears from Yellowstone bear world. So the thing that we we is really different this years," said Gunnell. "We don't have all of our food vendors here. And we just don't have a lot of our volunteers here and their historic clothing facilitating the event.”
Baby Animals Days this week began on Wednesday and runs until Saturday. American West Heritage Center hopes to do another Baby Animal Days festival Memorial Day weekend so people can take their bison tour.