It’s festival season around here, with all the various small towns (there are no big cities in this general region) having festivals every weekend. You could hit several in one day and still have to choose which ones to go to and which ones to pass on this year. I love the idea of fall festivals, so I get excited about going.

And then I get there and find that it’s actually just shopping. A “festival” is basically an open-air shopping mall with food trucks and maybe some music. Sometimes you even see the same vendors week after week at the different festivals. You’d think I’d have figured this out by now, but I still get excited about the idea of a fall festival. It sounds so quaint and romantic.

I went to one last weekend that was huge. The town is pretty small, and the entire downtown area was filled with those pop-up gazebo things and people selling their wares. There were lots of wood carvers selling cutting boards and decorative items, quilters selling various quilted things, metal work, soaps and other body products, plants, toys, etc. I did find an interesting item for a gift (so I’ve made a start on Christmas shopping), but it was hot and I was tired, so I didn’t linger to find the entertainment they supposedly had (I just saw a guy in a leather kilt playing the violin, but I don’t know if he was official entertainment or merely amusing himself). I was basing my plans on another festival I went to last year, where you could just pop in and out, but this thing was huge. You had to park at the high school on the edge of town and ride a school bus to the festival itself. I left my house after lunch, and it took me half an hour to get to the town, then half an hour to park, wait for the bus, then ride the bus to the festival, and then the driver said the last bus was leaving at 4, so I only had an hour and a half for the festival (and from what I’ve seen online, it was good that I left when I did because they ended up having big lines and long waits for shuttle buses at the end of the festival). It was a really neat little town, so I may go back when they’re not having a festival to take a look at it.

Now I’m trying to decide what to do this weekend. There’s a festival I went to last year on the border with West Virginia. The festival itself wasn’t much, but there were things going on in the surrounding area, and the scenery was fantastic, so I may head over there on Friday, and this time I’ll go over the border so I can add another state to my list. I didn’t find the apple cider donuts and the syrup mill last year, but now I have a better idea where they are. There’s also an arts festival at another nearby town on Saturday, but it looks like it might be a bit overwhelming. I may stay closer to home and do some activities in my town. There’s a concert taking place downtown on Saturday afternoon. Or there’s a ranger-led nature hike at a state park about an hour from here. That will have to depend on the weather.

The trees started changing colors in August but have stalled out since then. We’ve got a potential freeze alert for tomorrow morning, which might escalate things. Next weekend is probably closer to peak color here, so I’ll have to plan a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There’s so much fall to pack into just a few weeks.