The maiden voyage of the Walnutport Canal Association's Float Your Boat Parade was met with sunshine at the dock on Lehigh Street on Saturday. Both sides of the canal were lined with residents to view the floats and support the association.

Mary Surdoval organized the event as a way to get the word out about the canal's annual festival in October. Surdoval said of the canal, "It's a beautiful resource, and this is the first time I've ever seen people use it."Surdoval was pleased with the turn out saying it "exceeded my expectations. I only expected to get five and we ended up with eight floats registered."There were four trophies awarded to participants, the categories were most artistic, most comical, judges favorite and crowd favorite. The judges for the event were Walnutport Canal Association President Douglas Boehrer, Walnutport Mayor Wayne Weidner and Northern Lehigh Middle School art teacher Rick Eckhart.The crowd favorite was decided by monetary donations for each float. Half the money from the vote was awarded to the organization that created the float and the other half to the canal association.The winner for most artistic was Deb Barhight of the Slatington Women's Club. Most comical was awarded to Graig Soltis of the canal association with his George Washington crossing the Delaware float. The judge's favorite went to Lonnie Snyder of Christ UCC. Snyder's float was Noah and the Ark with Snyder dressed as Noah.Canal Association President Boehrer handed Surdoval all the credit for the successful event saying "it's great to see someone come up with something out of the ordinary."Boehrer said with "new members comes new thinking."The next canal association event is the Lehigh River Sojourn set to take place June 26 to June 29.This is the Wildlands Conservancy's 19th annual paddle trip down the canal with the Walnutport Canal Association providing dinner June 28 and breakfast the following morning for the participants.For more information visit

www.walnutportcanalassociation.tripod.com.