Greater Bend Rotary picking up ducks at the Great Drake Park Duck Race. Loren Irving is the man standing in the river collecting rubber ducks. The event is a Greater Bend Rotary fundraiser held annually since 1989.

One sure sign of normalcy coming back to Deschutes County is the return of the Great Drake Park Duck Race. Dare I call it a redux?

Sunday, some 15,000 to 20,000 colorful plastic ducks will be dumped into the Deschutes River at the Galveston Avenue Bridge around 1:30 p.m. via a large crane, free to float on the current down to Drake Park. Each duck is individually numbered and those numbers correspond to a spreadsheet of tickets purchased by people who have ponied up $5 a ticket in the hopes of winning one of 20 prizes. The grand prize is $5,000.

There will also be a kids’ duck race.

It started back in 1989 as a fun and quirky community event, according to the event organizers, modeled after a similar event in Eugene. Since then, the Great Rotary Duck Race has grown to become a fixture in the community’s late summer event schedule and includes all four Bend area Rotary clubs, and local credit unions (and selected charities) selling $5 raffle tickets to raise funds for local nonprofits.

Since its inception, the race has generated more than $1 million dollars for Central Oregon charities, all supporting children and families in need. Charities that will benefit this year include the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bend, Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, MountainStar Family Relief Nursery and the Deschutes Children’s Foundation.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the group to hold an electronic, virtual race for the past couple of years. Not quite as exciting as seeing 20,000 rubber duckies bobbing downstream. Watch a video of the race here.

Oran and Janie Teater were part of the original organizers. To their knowledge, no ducks ever escaped the nets and barriers downstream. There are also volunteers in kayaks and canoes to recover any if they do get away. All the ducks are tested in a pool to ensure they float on race day, too.

It should be noted that the state lottery commission takes a deep interest in a raffle of this size and sometimes sends monitors to ensure the integrity of the race. That is one reason the finish line, the wooden walking bridge at Drake Park, will be closed to the public, so an errant duckling doesn’t slip into the race late and pull out a win.

The Bulletin will be there Sunday to cover the race. We hope you will, too. But if not, watch for it in our Monday e-edition and online.

And please, help support our local journalism as we continue to cover a wealth of community events that make this area one of the more fun places to live.

Gerry O’Brien, Editor