Woolly Worm Festival

And depending on when you listen to the show this week, it might actually feel like fall out there.

We hope you had a chance to check out last week's episode where we focused directly on the Valley Country Fair and the Woolly Worm Festival.

Just check out that show archive I was talking about a moment ago.

It's easy to do if you're a subscriber.

A few numbers for you because, you know, if you forgot, we're a numbers podcast.

Last year, the third weekend of October brought us Valley Country Fair, the Woolly Worm Festival up in Banner Elk, and App State's Homecoming football game.

Now, according to our Placer AI data, downtown Boone saw nearly 94,000 non-resident visits that weekend.

Again, the football game had something to do with that.

Banner Elk, nearly 47,000 in the backyard of the Woolly Worm Festival.

Overall, Watauga County saw 125,000 visitors from October 17th through the 19th of 2025.

So these festivals are not just cute pop-up events.

Overall, there were nearly 1,500 jobs directly connected to the creative economy just here in Watauga County.