Bunkie will host the 38th annual Louisiana Corn Festival next week, Thursday, June 11, through Saturday, June 13.
Get ready for a fun-filled weekend the whole family will love. Enjoy live music, carnival rides, delicious food, arts & craft vendors, contests, the parade, and so much more.
The festival has a new logo, but this amazing tradition remains the same.
Avoyelles Parish Library will host several events on Friday, June 5, in support of the True Mission Matters (TMM) Project. TMM Project focuses on using dance to foster confidence and creativity; these events will kick off summer reading in the parish.
There will be three separate locations for these events as follows.
The Town of Cottonport will be flushing hydrants through June 5. Residents on the Cottonport water system may experience low water pressure during this time.
Celebrate the Louisiana Peach Festival’s 76th year with free admission, a wide range of entertainment and activities, and plenty of peachy events to enjoy leading up to the festival. Browse our guide below and start planning your trip to Downtown Ruston for the weekend of Saturday, June 6.
EAT:
From June 1-6, enjoy Peach Culinary Crawl, a weeklong tasting tour featuring over 20 local restaurants. Each participating location will offer special peach-inspired items. From peach BBQ and burgers to peach cocktails and desserts, there’s something to satisfy every craving. The full Culinary Crawl menu is available on the Peach Fest website.
SEE:
Get a preview of all the arts of the festival with the 39th Annual NCLAC Peach Art Exhibit. Check out the display of local artist of all ages in the Lincoln Parish Library Events Center happening all through July.
– Peach fest hack: After visiting the exhibit, take the quick drive to explore downtown Ruston, scope out the festival grounds, and snap a picture at one of the colorful murals!
EXPERIENCE: There’s plenty to enjoy Friday before the festival:
Saturday June 6: Festival Day!
Festival activities start at 9:00 AM and there’s plenty to eat, see, and experience—all located on the festival grounds.
EAT:
Festival Eats
Local Eats
Feeling like a sit-down meal? Check out these local restaurants that are walkable from the festival:
SEE:
EXPERIENCE:
SUNDAY:
After a busy Saturday, sleep in, take Sunday slow and enjoy Ruston’s cozy charm:
EAT:
SEE:
While you’re at the festival Saturday, you will likely spot a few of Ruston’s unique bulldog statues scattered throughout downtown. In total, there are 22 bulldogs placed around the city—each with its own charm. Stretch your visit a little longer and turn your Sunday into a scavenger hunt to track down the ones you missed.
EXPERIENCE:
Wind down with a peaceful visit to Lincoln Parish Park. This park offers mountain biking and walking trails, kayaking, fishing, and a playground for the kids. It’s the perfect way to soak in the natural beauty of Ruston and cap off your Peach Festival weekend.
From peachy treats and live music to charming shops and peaceful parks, the 76th Annual Louisiana Peach Festival is the perfect way to kick off your summer. Soak up the fun, explore Ruston, and celebrate 76 years of sweet traditions and unforgettable memories!
To learn the insider tips and tricks all seasoned festival goers know, read up on our How to Peach Fest blog.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) invites the public to take part in its annual Free Fishing Weekend on Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7. Louisiana’s Free Fishing Weekend allows residents and visitors to fish Louisiana waters without an otherwise required fishing license.
“This weekend there is no need to purchase a fishing license, so please bring your families and friends to enjoy one of our state’s most beloved pastimes,” says LDWF Secretary Tyler Bosworth. “Please take this opportunity to make memories with your loved ones and introduce them to the great sport of fishing.”
While a fishing license is not required, all fishing regulations, including size, season, catch limits, and gear restrictions, will remain in effect during Free Fishing Weekend.
For an added bonus, LDWF will hold the following events to teach the skills necessary to give anglers the best opportunity to catch fish. From lessons on bait choice, tackle setup, casting, and knot tying to fishing techniques, landing, handling, and taking the fish off the hook, LDWF has everyone covered.
In addition, a free Recreational Offshore Landing Permit (ROLP) is still needed during Free Fishing Weekend when possessing tunas, billfish, swordfish, amberjacks, groupers, snappers, hinds, cobia, wahoo, dolphinfish, and gray triggerfish. Anglers should choose the “Free Fishing Weekend” option for the license type. Anglers can skip the “LDWF Fishing License Number” field. A Free Fishing Weekend ROLP will be valid only on Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7. An annual ROLP is still needed if possessing offshore species outside of Free Fishing Weekend.
LDWF reminds the public that, at any time outside of Free Fishing Weekend, anglers 18 and older must possess a Louisiana fishing license to fish in any Louisiana public waters. Anyone who decides to continue fishing for the remainder of the year must purchase a state fishing license at Louisiana Outdoors.
Hundreds of kids who dream of playing in the pros – or, kids who just love to play – can get signed up for the free New Orleans Saints & Pelicans/Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Junior Training Camp on Saturday morning, June 27 on the Northwestern State campus in Natchitoches.
The JTC annually provides two hours of full throttle fun alongside Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame members and NSU coaches, and staff from the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans community relations department.
The clinic registration can be done quickly on the LaSportsHall.com website under the “events’ button. Or parents can call the LSHOF Foundation office at 318-238-4255 for registration help. The camp fills to its 300-kid capacity almost every summer.
The LaSportsHall.com website has the full schedule for the Induction Celebration June 25-27. The JTC is one of three free events, beginning with the Thursday evening Welcome Reception from 5-7 at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum at 800 Front Street in Natchitoches. The biggest free ticket is Friday night, June 26 Rockin’ Riverfest concert from 6-10:30 on the downtown riverbank, featuring a fireworks show after the Class of 2026 is introduced at 9:15.
The Junior Training Camp runs from 9-11 a.m., starting with registration between 8-9 a.m. at the Webb Wellness and Recreation Center (WRAC) gymnasium on the NSU campus. It’s important for parents to get their campers checked in well before the fun starts at 9 a.m. Then, campers get introduced to the sports stars who will be coaching them for the next two hours, inside focusing on basketball skills, and outside at Turpin Stadium, with football and general sports skills instruction.
Every camper will bring home two free T-shirts, other items, and a coupon for a meal at Raisin’ Canes. Photos from the camp will be posted on the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Facebook page, and so will a highlight video.
The goals of the JTC are simple – a fun, and thrilling, experience for the kids, free of charge; skills instruction from some of the best to ever play, or coach, the games; and promotion of health lifestyles and positive life choices.
The campers are separated into two groups. One stays inside for the first hour for basketball instruction, while the other is next door at Turpin Stadium, having football fun. The groups switch locations in the second half of the camp.
Parents can follow their favorite campers and watch all the fun from the stands in the gym and on the east side of Turpin Stadium – where it will be sunny, and hot, watching some really cool memories being made.
What a relief. There’s a big Congressional hearing Wednesday on the “Protect College Sports Act of 2026.”
“Supporting Student-Athletes, Restoring Fair Competition and Saving the Games Fans Love” is the stated mission of Senator Ted Cruz and colleagues.
“We cannot allow college athletics to morph int o a mini-NFL or NBA,” said Cruz in an official statement announcing the hearing.
Senator, you’re late. By decades.
Some of it is fine by me. Absolutely if coaches are raking in mega-million dollar salaries, as they have been on the top shelf of the NCAA for this century, then the players ought to be cut in on the pie.
These seven-figure NIL deals we hear recruits and transfers are getting are no more excessive than the eight-figure contracts that are going to head coaches. Neither should exist, but …
We’re never going back to college sports as we thought they were. That will happen right alongside peace in the Middle East and admitting a messy CIA-Mafia conspiracy took out JFK.
You’ll get a lot more clarity June 12 when Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” hits movie screens and we find out Bigfoot uses UFOs to get away from prying eyes.
Ridiculous? So is the idea that Congress can solve this mess. We know the high level university presidents and conference commissioners can’t. Their first priorities are their own bottom lines. And it’s their second and third priorities, too.
The presidents punted on this long ago. It’s great that the former Ohio State president testifying Wednesday, Gordon Gee, is the same bold leader who offered these gems discussing an NCAA scandal staining the Buckeyes’ football program:
He will no doubt show up at the hearing in his trademark bow tie. Looks academic. Here’s the clown Congress will hear from Wednesday: he ran up thousand-dollar luxury hotel bills on university expense accounts, got Ohio State to pay for $500 shower curtains for his university-provided house, and his marketing aces spent over $64,000 on bow ties, bow tie cookies and bow tie lapel pins for Gee and others to distribute over four years, according to reporting by the Dayton Daily News.
Surely he knows what’s good for the future of college sports.
Nick Saban will testify. He DOES know what’s good for the future of college sports.
He’s been telling anybody who will listen since the day he called it a coaching career, in part because their NIL package was the first and primary topic raised by practically every one of the first 20 or so players who he met with to discuss their futures with the following season’s Crimson Tide.
Listening to sages like Saban, and doing something about what you’ve heard, is where the disconnect exists with the presidents who make up the NCAA hierarchy and lead the Power 4 conference schools.
They are hoping Congress will impose its will where they would not. The Hatfields and McCoys have been sniping at each other across conference lines for decades instead of collaborating for the common good.
Now a group of presidents, board members and donors calling itself “Saving College Sports” – there’s even a snazzy letterhead – has presented Cruz and pals with a letter of support signed by dozens. New LSU president Wade Rousse’s name is on the letter. He told Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports he didn’t authorize his name to be included. Now that’s a reform-minded group, randomly claiming converts to its cause.
Know what’s missing from Wednesday’s festivities? Anyone not at the top tier. There are more than 360 NCAA Division I athletic programs. The issues discussed under the Capitol Dome tomorrow are so far out of scale for almost 300 of them that the eventual outcome for the non-Gucci schools is painfully predictable.
We saw it last month when the NCAA basketball postseasons, men and women, were padded to 76 teams – strictly a money grab for the biggies to get more teams in March Madness.
It doesn’t matter what’s good for the masses. It just comes down to what’s best for the masters of the college sports universe.
And they’re counting on a blow-hard heavy Congress, dripping in money from PACs and lobbyists that dwarf their actual salaries, to make it better?
Odds on that rank right up there with Jimmy Kimmel playing a round of golf with President Trump.
The ultimate solution to this mess will be when it crashes, drained of cash from disillusioned donors. Then we can hope that with nearly divine intervention, or desperation, university leadership from across the far-reaching landscape gets real and sorts it out into authentic tiers of economically-sound competition with real oversight and rules that get enforced.
As likely as Fox News and CNN merging.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) invites you to take part in its annual Free Fishing Weekend on Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7. Louisiana’s Free Fishing Weekend allows residents and visitors to fish Louisiana waters without an otherwise required fishing license.
“This weekend there is no need to purchase a fishing license, so please bring your families and friends to enjoy one of our state’s most beloved pastimes,” says LDWF Secretary Tyler Bosworth. “Please take this opportunity to make memories with your loved ones and introduce them to the great sport of fishing.”
While a fishing license is not required, all fishing regulations, including size, season, catch limits, and gear restrictions, will remain in effect during Free Fishing Weekend.
In addition, a free Recreational Offshore Landing Permit (ROLP) is still needed during Free Fishing Weekend when possessing tunas, billfish, swordfish, amberjacks, groupers, snappers, hinds, cobia, wahoo, dolphinfish, and gray triggerfish. When registering online at wlf.louisiana.gov, anglers should choose the “Free Fishing Weekend” option for the license type. Anglers can skip the “LDWF Fishing License Number” field. A Free Fishing Weekend ROLP will be valid only on Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7. An annual ROLP is still needed if possessing offshore species outside of Free Fishing Weekend.
LDWF reminds the public that, at any time outside of Free Fishing Weekend, anglers 18 and older must possess a Louisiana fishing license to fish in any Louisiana public waters. Anyone who decides to continue fishing for the remainder of the year must purchase a state fishing license.