Ocean City Hosts Winter Warrior Festival and Nature Fun Day

Registration is open for a new Presidents Day Weekend race event that will bring families and local businesses together in Ocean City in the heart of winter.

The Winter Warrior Festival will be staged from Ocean City Civic Center on Saturday, Feb. 17, and provide fun and wintry challenges for adults, children and teams representing local businesses and groups.

The Ocean City Environmental Commission will sponsor its annual free Nature and the Environment Family Fun Day next door at the Ocean City High School cafeteria on the same morning of Feb. 17. The dual events provide a great way to escape cabin fever in mid-February.

The Winter Warrior Festival will be held 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Feb. 17 and include four components: an obstacle course race for children, a “Winter Warrior” obstacle challenge for parents and individuals, team challenges such as a fire truck pull, and an indoor festival for participants and spectators.

The festival is free to attend, and you do not need to be a participant in any of the races. It will be indoors at the Civic Center. Local merchants and food vendors will have goods, crafts and food for sale.

• Kids Obstacles: A fun, non-competitive course includes a rock wall, hazard walls, cargo net, agility poles, teeter plank, monkey bars, floating steps, tire run, and noodle tower.
• Winter Warrior Challenge: Show your grit on a cold 2.5-mile course with 10 obstacles. Look for things like sand mounds, tires, teeter-totters and monkey bars along the way. This race is reserved for participants ages 14 and older. All survivors receive an exclusive Winter Warrior Challenge finisher T-shirt.
• Winter Warrior Team Challenges: Teams of four from local businesses, organizations, churches and other groups will compete in events such as a fire-truck pull and tire-flip relay.
• Winter Warrior Festival: As the events go on outside and for a post-race celebration, local merchants, restaurants and services will set up inside the Civic Center for a mid-winter festival – offering an early taste of the long-awaited summer.

Registration for all events is open now. Discounted fees will be available through 4 p.m. Feb. 14. For complete information and registration, visit ocnj.us/OCNJWinterWarrior.

The Nature and the Environment Family Fun Day is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17 in the Ocean City High School cafeteria.

This year’s fifth annual event will include a wide range of nature and environmentally focused hands-on, interactive, fun and educational experiences for both children and adults.

The free event is sponsored by Ocean City’s Environmental Commission and held in partnership with the Ocean City Free Public Library and the Cape May County Park & Zoo, the Wetlands Institute and Rutgers University Agricultural Extension.

The tentative lineup of participants includes:

• Hands-on activities
• Small zoo animal interaction
• Marine life interaction
• Recycling arts and crafts
• Nature and environmental take-aways
• Demonstrations, exhibits, experts and take-aways for the whole family
• Bringing back the original Jersey tomato – lecture & seed giveaway (Rutgers Univ.)
• Environmentally friendly shellfish replenishing – demonstration (ACT Engineers)
• Protecting the watershed and cleaning up the bay – demonstration (AmeriCorps)
• Trash decomposition and the environment (Ocean City Environmental Commission)
• The ins and outs of recycling (Cape May Municipal Utilities Authority)
• How to compost (Ocean City Environmental Commission)
• Native plants exhibit (Ocean City Environmental Commission)
• Energy efficiency (South Jersey Gas)
• Energy efficiency (AC Electric)
• Water efficiency (New Jersey American Water)
• Solid waste and wastewater management (Cape May Municipal Utilities Authority)
• Electric-vehicle charging