Celebrate the Apple

My friends at Highland Graphics have translated four of my happy images into tumbled stone coasters.  Visit them at www.highlandgraphics.com (and tell them Beth sent you).

Every September our little Main Street turns into a mass of 75,000 people, all gathered for one purpose - to celebrate the apple.

 The Lincoln County Apple Festival is a local tradition that coincides with our apple harvest.  We are one of North Carolina's largest apple producing regions.

Septembers here are still considered summertime, and most years we are are blessed with sunshine and temps in the high 80's/low 90's - except for the year that we had a hurricane bearing down on us and they canceled the whole festival - only to have the thing blow in another direction and festival day dawn bright and clear here - not a cloud in the sky.  Suffice it to say they haven't made that mistake again.  The festival goes on - rain or shine.

So, tomorrow our little downtown will be home to marching bands, local barbecue, balloons, quilt contests, politicians, families with babies in strollers and kids on dad's shoulders, funnel cakes, T-shirts, soap-box derbies, craft sales, 5K runners, the sound of "Hey, how y'all doin?" magnified 75,000 times - and enough apple pies, apple butter, candy apples, and Apple Queens to reach around the planet several times.

I love a good festival.

TODAY IS COUNTDOWN FRIDAY

TODAY'S COUNT IS 16

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.