Cleveland and Northeast Ohio is the only area to host fun and interesting fall festivals. All over the Buckeye State, there are harvest festivals, food festivals, and other fun, fall events. Below is just a sampling.
Around home, we have the Ashtabula Covered Bridge Festival in Jefferson, Geneva Grape Jamboree, the Ohio Swiss Fest in Sugar Creek, and the whimsical Wooly Bear Festival in Vermilion. Click the link above for a description of these and other NE Ohio fall festivals.
The Pumpkin Festival in Circleville, south of Columbus, is Ohio's oldest festival. Founded in 1903, the event takes place each third Wednesday through Sunday in October.
Activities include multiple parades, all kinds of pumpkin food, carnival rides, arts & crafts, and more than 100,000 pounds of pumpkins and gourds on display. The festival draws more than 100,000 per day to this town of 12,000. Admission is free.
The Ohio Renaissance Festival, Ohio's largest Medieval event, is held each year for eight weekends beginning Labor Day weekend in Harveysburg, Ohio (located between Cincinnati and Dayton). The Festival is held on a 30-acre permanent village, recreated in the flavor of Elizabethan England.
Activities include jousting tournaments, costumed roving performers, 12 stages of entertainment, an arts & crafts marketplace, traditional food and drink, and skill competitions.
The Ohio River Sternwheel Festival, located in historic downtown Marietta Ohio, began in 1976. The free, three-day festival draws more than 100,000 visitors each September and showcases more than 30 classic river boats each year. Activities include an art show, food, fireworks, live entertainment children's activities, and lots of fun.
The Ohio Sauerkraut Festival is held the second weekend in October annually in Waynesville, Ohio (equidistant from Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati).
Activities at the festival, which began in 1970, include more than 500 crafts vendors, live entertainment, a cabbage recipe contest, and lots of sauerkraut food. Last year, they served more than seven tons of sauerkraut!
The Country Apple Fest is held in late September each year in Lebanon, Ohio, just west of Columbus. The one-day event features a host of hand-made craft vendors, live entertainment, and good apple products to eat.
Ohio's Apple Butter Fest is held in mid-October each year in Grand Rapids, Ohio, just outside of Toledo. Features include a country craft marketplace, apple butter making demonstrations, War of 1812 re-enactments, live music, and lots of apple butter.
Held in mid-October each year since 1970, the Bob Evans Farm Festival is a celebration of good food, good music, and quality hand-made crafts. The festival is located at the Bob Evans Farm in Rio Grande, Ohio, near the Ohio River in the central part of the state.