Fall is festival time all over the country and the North Georgia area seems especially so.  There are way more festivals on any given weekend during this time than any one person can get to.  But in our 22 years in this area we have come to favor a few and found ourselves attracted to them year after year.  Normally we pick one, or if we try really hard we make it to two each season.  But now that there are no gutters to clean, lawn to mow, leaves to rake, garage to clean or the multitude of other things one has to do to keep a bricks and sticks kept up, we found ourselves with time to get to more this year.

A big one that seems to kick off the fall festival season is the Yellow Daisy Festival at Stone Mountain Park, GA.  If nothing else, it is large.  But it is more than just a big festival, it is a diverse festival.  It has attractions by corporate sponsors like you would see at a State Fair, the likes of Ford and the Texas Tourist Bureau.  Then there is the three acre pasture that doubles as a food court.  You can get everything from the ubiquitous foot long corn dog and giant turkey leg to some finer fare of local restaurants and caterers.

But the main attraction is the arts and crafts booths.  Hundreds of them.  This is what gets Cyndee going.  When she gets on the trails that make the circuits through the woods full of these booths she is 'in the zone'.

Next is the Ellijay apple festival.  This is a mountain town in North Georgia that became its county seat in 1834.  Half of the county's 427 sq miles is in the Chattahoochee National Forest and it seems the other half is covered in apple orchards.  It is a nice place to spend the day.  You can pick your own apples or get a bushel or two from one of the many apple stands that dot the country side.

The old, original center of town has preserved buildings that date back to before the civil war.  It seems that the whole of the old downtown has been converted into an antique'rs paradise.  Another place that Cyndee gets into her zone.

As Halloween approaches, our thoughts turn to pumpkins, and Burt's Farm is the place to be for virtually any kind and any size you have in mind.  This is not really a festival but it draws such large crowds it sure feels like a festival.

Burt's has a great selection of pumpkins that we have enjoyed for years to pick the 'perfect' one for carving.

This year we are living in a place that has absolutely no children so we won't be carving any pumpkins but we still liked shopping for them.

Heck of a month!  And this was not all of it.  We also celebrated my birthday by taking a trip to Cartersville and touring two museums and having a fantastic lunch in a place named 'The City Cellar'.  The shrimp and grits with andouille sausage was worth the trip all by itself.