CityView Magazine

Fallin' Fun FEATURE Into A guide to fall festivals across the state A BY BRYAN MIMS s I write this sentence, I'm still doing time by the air conditioner. The cicadas outside my window sound like a weed eater that just won't come unplugged, whining on and on so as not to let me forget I'm still in the thick of summer. Everything is thick – the air, the trees, the grass. Everything is green – an unyielding, unruly green from unrelenting rain this summer. Vines swallow my fence. My grass needs mowing…again. As I write this sentence, I'm yearning for a month that ends in –ber. The onset of what I call the "ber months" – September, October, November, December – have always given me a certain tingle. Granted, here in the Sandhills, the heat can hammer on well past Labor Day. However, when the calendar flips from August to September, I'm in a different state of mind…even if sweat still glosses my head. Come September, I'm filled with anticipation, a sense that things will soon be different. The air will soon be crisper, the sky will soon be bluer, and the bugs will soon be scarcer. Come September, I start craving candy corn, corn mazes and county fairs. I'm ready to pick the perfect pumpkin to put on my porch. I'm ready to strike out for the mountains to watch the firestorm of reds and yellows on the slopes. Head for the hills Its fall in North Carolina, and each year I eat it up like a bite out of a Red Delicious apple from the hills over Hendersonville. Which reminds me, September always arrives in our state with the North Carolina Apple Festival in Hendersonville, a short drive south of Asheville. It's been a La- bor Day tradition in this small, yet sophisticated mountain city, ringed with apple orchards, for more than 60 years. You can enjoy a street fair, a parade and partake in bushels and bushels of apples – Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Rome Beauty, Galas. You can eat apple pie, apple cake, apple butter, apple bread, apple turnovers, apple crisps and wash it all down with apple juice. Growing up just down the mountain in Greenville, South Carolina, I spent many a Labor Day weekend in Hendersonville, planting white paper bags bulging with apples on the car's floorboard. And no store-bought apple juice can compare to that brown nectar from plastic jugs sold along roadsides in communities like Fruitland and Edneyville. This year, the apple festival begins Friday, August 30 and wraps up Labor Day, September 2. September is still too early to soak in the fall colors in the mountains, but the region is speckled with colorful festivals, such as ColorFest: Art and Taste of Applachia. The month-long celebration is in Dillsboro, about an hour's drive southwest of Asheville. Artists from across the region show off their creations in downtown, with everything culminating in a festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on October 5. Throughout September and October, as you join the legions of leaf lookers, you can enjoy mountain festivals celebrating everything from gems (N.C. Wholesale Gem and Jewelry Tradeshow, Ashville, October 22-23) to Volkswagens (VW's in the Valley, Maggie Valley, September 21-22). Closer to home Maybe you don't have mountains on your autumn horizon, or much gas money to burn. Maybe you'd prefer to CityViewNC.com | 43

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