A Salina woman, with a little help from her family, found the 2021 Smoky Hill River Festival Medallion early Sunday afternoon.

A very happy Heike Daily displayed her new-found treasure at a media conference later in the afternoon.

Daily found the medallion, a grey-colored box with a sliding lid, placed under the base of a lamp post located just south of the Trifinity sculpture in the City-County building’s green space. She had been looking for the medallion on Sunday With help from  two of her sons, including local son Brad and son Aaron of Peachtree City, Georgia, and local granddaughter Tess

Daily said she has searched every year since the Quest began in 2009, first with her sister. On Sunday, as she looked with her family, “All of a sudden, we saw the lampposts that looked like a moon, and noticed were in a straight line. Then across from them was the “new and old” courthouses, which led us to look again at the lampposts. Then, we realized that “the missing eight” was Eighth Street, which ends south of the courthouse.”

Daily is the 15th winner of the Festival Medallion Quest that was started in 2009 by the Smoky Hill River Festival. The Festival Medallion Quest’s goal is to foster creativity and connectivity in a way that reflects the spirit of the River Festival.

According to Salina Arts and Humanities, the 2021 Quest took nearly five days and returned to the “old” or previous format of two daily written-only clues. In 2019, a graphic-clue style Quest lasted five days, with mother-daughter duo Gwenna Reich (“Rich”) and daughter Tara Sauber finding the Medallion, which was a metal tube attached to a rock placed in the fountain at Sunset Park.

The 2018 Medallion, found by Lynn Brown Larsen and Melody Hoeffner, was a custom-designed cassette tape and box, hidden near a trail in Indian Rock Park. In 2017, winner Eric Carlson found a tree bark-shaped Medallion off of east Cloud Street in the River Woods Nature Trail, a newer Salina park.

The 2021 Quest winner receive a prize package of $1,000 in cash and $1,000 in Gift Certificates to be used for shopping at the River Festival 2021 Fine Art and Craft Show. Other prizes include four Festival admission Wristbands, Festival water bottles, a complimentary on-grounds VIP parking pass, an invitation for four to the Thursday evening PREMIERE Art Patron party, 45th-anniversary gator-style Festival bandannas, and four River Festival T-shirts.

The Smoky Hill River Festival, now in its 45th year, is the flagship event of Salina Arts & Humanities, a department of the City of Salina. The River Festival draws many local residents and out-of-town guests each year to Salina, to enjoy outdoor art installations, the Fine Art and Craft Show, four stages of live entertainment, the Artyopolis kid’s area, Festival food and more. The River Festival generates approximately $3.5 million in revenue each year, within the local community.

Advance-price, four-day Festival Wristbands are available online until the close of day on Tuesday, August 31 at about 40 Salina locations and in 18 other regional cities. Children 11 and under get in free.

For more information on the Festival Medallion Quest or the Smoky Hill River Festival, call 785-309-5770 or visit riverfestival.com.

To view the full set of Festival Medallion Quest clues, go to festivalmedallionquest.com and click on the Clues page at https://www.festivalmedallionquest.com/play-quest.

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