Bele Chere

I am so excited for this weekend to finally be here! Every year, during the last full weekend in July, Asheville NC hosts the annual Bele Chere festival! We go every year. It is one of the south's largest festivals and is totally free to get in! It takes over downtown for three days and they say over 300,000 people come out. They have bands playing(which are free, too!), Ultimate Air Dogs dock jumping, tons of arts and crafts for sale, street vendors and fun stuff for the kids! It is one of our favorite festivals,ever. Last year, we took my cousin and her family for their first time, and we got to see the dogs jumping after balls into a huge pool. It was so much fun, Faith just loved seeing all the different dogs. We always try to get up early and drive up, it's about a 1 1/2 hr drive for us, so we try to get there before the crush of the crowd and the heat of the afternoon. Asheville is such a cool city anyway, it is home all kinds of funky, unusual characters and stores. One of my favs is Mast General Store, an old time store with barrels of candy, funky clothing and neat shoes. Another one is Chevron Bead store, they have every kind of cool bead you could imagine. It's great to have something to look foward to! I am attaching a link to the Bele Chere webpage, if you are curious about it. It's great!
http://www.belecherefestival.com/