Former queen shares sights, sounds of all things Orange City

The oddity? It happened in Pella, Iowa, not Orange city, her hometown.

As 2009 Orange City Tulip Festival Queen, Pennings joined her court in representing Orange City in parades at the Pella Tulip Festival. For an evening parade, she recalled, she and the court sat carefully to avoid rainwater that had soaked the float.

"I had my hat and three under-caps," she says. "A gust of wind came up and blew off my hats and two of the members of the court had to catch and help me with those hats."

Two other members of the court, meantime, sprawled out atop garbage bags on the float to keep the bags from blowing away. The bags were used to keep the seats as dry as possible.

"It was probably funny seeing us go down the street, me, trying to keep my caps and the others trying to keep everything dry," she says.

Pennings has all sorts of other Tulip Festival memories, but most of them having to do with Orange City, her hometown, and the city she serves as Tulip Festival & Community Tourism Director, a post she's maintained since 2014.

"This is my third Tulip Festival in this position," says Pennings, a 2012 graduate of Northwestern College.

It is in this role that Pennings directs tours each year throughout Orange City. The tours may take place on foot (smaller, informal tour downtown) or with Pennings at the front of a chartered bus, noting the industrial, historical, educational and commercial highlights within the Sioux County seat.

Tourists take tours, as do prospective employees of a number of manufacturing entities in Orange City. Sometimes, it might be someone interested in relocating to this community of 6,182 residents.

"I think we'll do six to eight chartered bus tours during Tulip Fest, and people may also take horse-drawn trolley tours during that time," says Pennings, who notes that volunteers direct those tours during the three-day May celebration.

"We provide information on the strong educational foundation we have in Orange City while talking about industry and recreation," she says. "We share things like the Diamond-Vogel company history, and how Pizza Ranch has its headquarters here."

Pennings also covers the settling of Orange City and how her hometown developed in the wake of Pella, Iowa's other predominantly Dutch settlement.

Visitors can join Pennings in seeing a model Vogel mill in action. They also get to try their hand at carving a wooden shoe in the new Stadscentrum facility across the street from Windmill Park.

"Andrew Vogel (founder of Diamond Vogel) learned to grind paint pigments in the old country," she says. "The old mill we show has gears, but doesn't actually grind paint pigments."

Common questions directed at Pennings often focus on authentic Dutch costumes and foods and when, exactly, the Tulip Festival takes place.

"People are often surprised to learn that 100,000 visitors come here to a city of 6,000 during Tulip Fest," she says. "Actually, people are surprised to learn how much industry there is here in a town of 6,000."

When not out promoting all things Orange City, Pennings can be found staffing the windmill that serves as the Orange City Chamber of Commerce headquarters. It is in this location that she helps visitors pick their seats for the Tulip Festival Night Show. It is also here that she picks up the phone to answer the most frequently heard question each April and early May.

"People call a lot this time of year to ask if we'll have tulips," she says. "They want to know when they will bloom and how tall they will be."

Pennings has her standard response at the ready.

"We don't know when exactly they'll bloom," she says. "But we have several varieties planted at several different time, which helps ensure that we'll almost always have tulips blooming for Tulip Fest."