The biggest festival in our area is the Azalea Festival, which started in 1948. This is the official festival for the State of NC and it attracts visitors in the hundreds of thousands. Locals learn quickly how to find parking when the parade happens! Some downtown folks have rented out there yards and driveways to visitors so they could easily walk to the parade route. The festival also has a street fair, the arrival of the Azalea Queen, garden tours and any number of events from horse shows, cake baking contests, air shows from the Blue Angels or Black Knights, rock concerts from major stars and too many things to mention in this short blog. If you can only hit one festival a year this is the one!

But if flowers and funnel cake is not your thing; we also have many other types of festivals. There is the Pleasure Island Seafood Blues and Jazz Festival (yummy food and great music), Riverfest (food, music, events and street fair), the Cucalorus Film Festival (indie films and filmmakers from around the world), The Cape Fear Blues Festival (local and regional artists), Final Cut Film Festival (make a film in a weekend), The Greek Festival (food and culture), Blue Grass Festival (great music) and more. New events crop up all the time. Most include entertainment for all ages but you may want to double check. The vast majority of music festivals make sure the bands are family friendly early in the day. Most of the festivals have food and drink vendors and some offer novelty items for sale too. Each has rules and they normally broadcast that in their advertising. Make sure to check to see which allows you to bring lawn chairs and coolers or if only chairs are allowed. Some allow pets but I would not want to walk a dog in some of those huge crowds.