The tenor of fall festivals seems to be changing.
Festivals in the Tennessee Valley are evolving from traditional displays of handmade arts and crafts into multiday fundraisers featuring music competitions, sporting events and crowd-pleasing displays such as hot-air balloons.
Mark your calendars for a new 10-day festival, RiverRocks, that makes its debut Oct. 1. It’s a combination of outdoor music festival, professional and amateur adventure activities and cirque-style entertainment.
RiverRocks is one of the 80 fall fairs and festivals that readers can find listed in today’s 2010 Fall Festival Guide on page E5.
Ann Ball of Chattanooga Presents said RiverRocks will offer activities at the Tennessee Aquarium, an Imax film fest, history and photography cruises through the Tennessee River Gorge, hikes and bike rides every day, geocaching and a sunset paddle to Maclellan Island. It will draw 20 hot-air balloons to Coolidge Park.
There also will be a performance by Doug White, a trick mountain bike rider who formerly performed with Cirque du Soleil, and a one-of-a-kind light show to conclude the festival.
“The light show is not a laser show or fireworks. It’s something developed for RiverRocks that hasn’t been done any place before,” Ball said.
Ball credits Mike and Stormy McGauley with the idea for RiverRocks, which took more than two years to bring to fruition.
“The timing was right to produce a new festival specifically designed to celebrate our history and heritage and showcase our natural resources and the activities they inspire,” said McGauley, president of Fidelity Trust.
“The key components are that it’s family-friendly, environmentally conscious and offers something for the serious competitor as well as the spectator,” he said.
Proceeds from the festival will benefit eight area land trusts and conservancies, many of which are host sites for RiverRocks events. In all, more than 90 activities are packed into those 10 days. Read the full schedule at www.riverrockschattanooga.com.
Cindy Milligan, director of the Southeast Tennessee Tourism Association, said two more festivals are debuting this fall, both Oct. 30: Benton, Tenn.’s Heritage Days and Monteagle Fall Fest.
Susan Palmer Pierce is a reporter and columnist in the Life department. She began her journalism career as a summer employee 1972 for the News Free Press, typing bridal announcements and photo captions. She became a full-time employee in 1980, working her way up to feature writer, then special sections editor, then Lifestyle editor in 1995 until the merge of the NFP and Times in 1999. She was honored with the 2007 Chattanooga Woman of ...
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