Story by Patti Brown

The Great Estes Park Duck Race takes flight Saturday, but the weekend fun kicks off with music and laughs tonight starting with Warburton’s Mountain Madness launch dance party and concert at the Stanely Concert Hall from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The event features Burn The Ballroom, a high energy rock band, with actor and comedian Patrick Warburton who starred in Seinfeld, Rules of Engagement, and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Tickets for the event are $40, but if you adopt a duck for $25, you will get a special code via email for complimentary tickets to the Friday night launch event.

Saturday morning there will be a 5K Duck Waddle race around Lake Estes. Click here to register online, or show up at 8 a.m. on the northeast side of Estes Park Parking Structure for race day registration. The race begins at 9 a.m. at the Lake Estes Trail on the east of the Parking Structure. Racers will get a t-shirt and a race day ticket.

This year’s duck race — the 36th — will look different with a new course and a new starting point at the recently renamed Baldwin Parking Lot located in front of the post office.

The venue will open at 11 a.m. and the first of five races beginning at noon when Warburton steps up to serve as the event’s grand marshal to pull the cord on the cage to release the raft of ducks. The next four races will begin at the top of the hour.

The day’s festivities include a Kid Zone at Riverside Plaza with kids’ duck race, bounce houses, street performers, face painters, and arts and crafts. Other events and activities will take place along the River Walk.

One of the most “poop-ular” events is the Duck Squat Game. For $10, you can place a bet on which square the duck chooses to squat. The grand prize is $500 if your square is picked.

The finish line and prize zone will be next to the Estes Park Visitor Center. The grand prize is $10,000 Cash. Other prizes include a two-night Nova Guides adventure trip, a guided climbing experience, and e-bike and ATV rentals.

In all the prizes total $30,000 in value and the event expects to generate more than $215,000 which will be distributed to 75 area nonprofit organizations.

Saturday night the entertainment continues with Warburton taking the stage at The Stanley for two sold-out stand-up comedy shows.

In an interview with the Estes Valley Voice, Warburton describes his 90-minute show “as adult and a bit naughty.”

His humor is anecdotal, drawing on 34 years of married life and raising four kids, and having seven dogs, “and a mean wife,” teases Warburton.

“She’s actually very supportive and quite wonderful, but nobody wants to hear anybody get up on stage and talk about how great their life is. It’s all about bitch and moaning and complaining, and I do plenty of that.”

Warburton’s show is promoted by Estes Park resident Marcia Rothschild of Six Wolves, an international casting company.

The Rocky Mountain Madness continues Saturday night, with Adam Cayton Holland, a standup comedian from Denver who will perform at The Barrell at 8 p.m.

The father of two young boys ages 6 and 3, Cayton Holland describes himself as a fulltime comedian and “writes what you know.”

He also draws from a deep well marked by his sister’s suicide and the need to face his own demons. He chronicled this in “Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-comic Memoir,” an honest, unsentimental book that takes a reader into some dark places with a combination of wit, wisdom, grief, and laughter.

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