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Gettysburg Festival
The Gettysburg Festival ~ Celebrating America
147th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
July 1 - 3, 2010, 195 Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg
A series of special National Park Service Ranger – conducted Battle Walks and real-time programs that follow the course of the battle over 3 days. FREE
Gettysburg 147th National Civil War Battle Reenactment
July 2 - 5, 2010, Redding Farm, Gettysburg
The Gettysburg 147th National Civil War Battle Reenactment is an all-day family event. The gates open at 8:30 a.m., each day will include two exciting battles, field demonstrations, live mortar fire demonstrations, two activities tents with continuous living history programs, and a living history village with all-day activities. Visitors are invited to shop in the very impressive "Sutler Row" where they will discover period-style clothing and wares or walk through the military camps to experience 1860's military life and talk to these living historians.
www.gettysburgreenactement.com
45th Annual National Apple Harvest Festival
October 2-3 & October 9-10, 2010, Route 234, Arendtsville, 717-677-9413
Harvest time is celebrated in this old time festival held at the South Mountain Fairgrounds, 10 miles northwest of Gettysburg. Don't miss the live entertainment, over 300 arts & crafts vendors, farm displays, antique farm equipment, antique and classic cars, steam engines, antique cider press, orchard tours, pony rides, a petting zoo and so much more! Be sure to sample all the great food. This event takes place rain or shine, be sure to wear your comfy shoes for a day of fun. The Apple Harvest Festival is held the first and second weekend of October. Held 8 am to 6 pm each day. Parking included in cost of admission.
Lititz Fire & Ice Festival (about 7,000 attendees)
The “ice” of this family festival is in ice sculptures and carvings, and the “fire” is in a chili cook-off! With Friday night block party, art show and auction, live entertainment, an igloo/ice fort contest and more!
Mud Sales (11 Sales, the largest drawing 17,000 daily)
Annual auctions hosted by local fire companies, appropriately named for the condition of the thawing ground and featuring everything from antique furniture and quilts to lawn equipment and buggies!
Quilters’ Heritage Celebration (about 15,000 attendees)
April 8 – 11, 2010, Lancaster Host Resort & Conference Center, Lancaster
A special event for quilters and quilt enthusiasts featuring more than 500 quilts on exhibit, plus classes, competitions, merchants and more!
Spring Art Walk (about 2,000 attendees)
April, City of Lancaster
A two-day walking tour of 25 arts organizations, artists' studios and businesses in downtown Lancaster.
Antiques Capital U.S.A. Extravaganza
April , Adamstown
Additional dealers and special outdoor displays are drawn to the eighteen area markets all conveniently situated within a three-mile radius. More than 3,000 dealers in total!
Herb & Garden Faire (about 3,500 attendees)
May
One of the largest East Coast plant and garden sales, featuring Landis Valley's highly regarded Heirloom Seed project and more than 90 vendors.
Christian Family Fest
May
Live musical performances by The Doughnut Man, Steven Courtney Band and other Christian groups, plus special festival activities and all your favorite rides and entertainment!
Rhubarb Festival (8,000 to 10,000 attendees)
May 21 – 22, 2010
One of America's most unique festivals with food, music, family festivities and games totally dedicated to rhubarb!
Lancaster Sertoma Chicken Barbecue
May
More than 30,000 chicken dinners are prepared for this event, dubbed the world's largest chicken barbecue by The Guiness Book of World Records! With beautiful scenery and live entertainment.
The Great Pennsylvania FlavorFest™
May
A three-day celebration of unique culinary specialties from Lancaster County and throughout the state, with sampling, chef competitions and demos, plus high-end craft, artisans and musical entertainment!
Back to the Past Block Party & Antique Show
June
Annual block party featuring antiques, art, collectibles and craft show, plus food vendors, live music and entertainment, contests, appraisals, carnival games and more.
Long’s Park Summer Entertainment Series (about 97,000 attendees for the summer)
Sunday evenings, June 7 – August 30
Bring your picnic basket, blankets and lawn chairs for exciting entertainment each Sunday during the summer! Plus family foods and desserts.
Great Eastern Invitational Microbrewery Festival
June 13, August 22, October 16 – 17
Enjoy more than 50 beers from 20 microbreweries, plus the German "Best of the Wurst" buffet and music by the Daisy Jug Band.
Day Out with Thomas
June 13 – 21, September 12 – 20, December 4 – 6, Strasburg Rail Road, Strasburg
Thomas the Tank Engine, a full-sized, operating steam locomotive, chugs into town with his friends for train rides, storytelling, live music, and more fun for kids!
Demuth Garden Tour Weekend
June
Seventeen city and suburban gardens in Lancaster are featured, including Charles Demuth's garden, a horse farm and a unique cluster of seven city gardens.
Berry Festival (8,000 to 10,000 attendees)
June 19 – 20, Kitchen Kettle Village, Intercourse
A turn-of-the-century community social featuring everything "berry!" Food displays and cooking ideas, old-fashioned family activities and jazz and banjo music.
Intercourse Heritage Days
June 19 – 21, Intercourse Community Park, Intercourse
An “old fashioned” family celebration, including heritage displays, an antique car show, PA Dutch food showcase, heritage bike tour, volleyball tournament, fireworks and more!
www.intercourseheritagedays.com
Celtic Fling (about 20,000 attendees)
June 27 – 28, Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, Manheim
An authentic festival shrouding the Faire's 35 acres in kilts, cabers, official Scottish athletic competitions, sanctioned dance contest, border collie sheepherding, Celtic crafts, food and music.
Annual Tomato Festival
July 11 – 18, 2009 & July 10 – 17, 2010
An entire festival celebrating the river town’s agricultural legacy of the tomato! With a full menu of favorite foods, vendor stands, carnival games, prizes and live entertainment.
Paddle Tours
Early July through early October
Each tour revolves around a different theme to explore the Susquehanna River, ranging from fall foliage to rock exploration to star gazing. Sunrise or sunset and in between, often including meals.
Music in the Vineyards
Saturday evenings, July 4 – Labor Day Weekend
Bring a picnic, lawn chairs, blanket and friends to relax under the stars for Nissley's summer series of open air lawn concerts! With snacks and chilled Nissley wines.
The Amazing Maize Maze (50,000+ attendees)
July 4 – November 7
Exciting “agritainment” for the entire family, featuring a maze carved into a 5-acre corn field, plus animals, rides, activities and great food!
PA Renaissance Faire (250,000+ attendees)
Saturdays and Sundays & Labor Day Monday, August 8 – October 25
35 acres are transformed into a 16th century Elizabethan village. Packed with costumed characters, artisans, stage productions, mud pit battles, a life-sized chess board, jousting, lots of eclectic food and more!
Art in the Park
August 15
A celebration of the art featuring free hands-on projects for children of all ages! Activities range from jewelry making to painting in the children’s art gallery to fun in a toddler tent.
Long’s Park Arts & Craft Festival (about 18,000 attendees)
September 4 – 7, Long’s Park, Lancaster
Now recognized as one of American's top fine art and contemporary craft shows, featuring 200 exhibitors, live music and gourmet restaurant fare all weekend long!
Lancaster County Restaurant Week
Second week in September
During this special week-long event, sample local delicacies at 30 restaurants throughout Lancaster County offering 3-course fixed-priced menus for just $30!
www.padutchcountry.com/restaurantweek
Sweets & Sours Festival (8,000 to 10,000 attendees per day)
September 18 – 20
A celebration of Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine, with food tasting, recipe sharing, pumpkin painting, cookie decorating, local artists making scarecrows and live ragtime entertainment.
Annual Bridge Bust
October 3
A variety of antiques, arts, crafts, food and entertainment fill the historic, mile-long Veteran's Memorial Bridge connecting Columbia and Wrightsville.
Harvest Breakfast
October 3
A celebration of Lancaster County's harvest, with music, children's activities, cooking demonstrations and food tastings!
Oktoberfest
Sundays in October, October 4 – 25 (Kick-off, September 26 – 27)
Stoudt’s Brewery, Adamstown
Dance to the music by German bands while tasting beers and enjoying lots of authentic foods: roasted pig, grilled Bratwurst, spiced sauerkraut and soft pretzels twice the size of the bakers' hands that roll them!
Chocolate Walk (about 3,000 attendees)
October 10
Chocolate walkers stroll the streets of historic Lititz and stop at more than 20 chocolate tasting locations featuring the delicacies created by local chocolate candy makers and pastry chefs.
Fall Art Walk (about 2,000 attendees)
October 18 – 19, Downtown Lancaster
A two-day walking tour of 25 arts organizations, artists' studios and businesses in downtown Lancaster.
Harvest Days (about 5,000 attendees)
October 10 – 11
More than 80 demonstrators participating in activities that date back as far as the mid-1700s, including threshing, food preserving, cider and apple butter making, open hearth cooking and craft demonstrations.
Happy Hauntings
Weekends, October 17 – November 1, Dutch Wonderland Family Amusement Park, Lancaster
Family friendly Halloween fun with 20 themed rides and attractions, trick-or-treating, magic shows, ghoulish games, pumpkin painting, special fall food and storytelling by The Princess of Dutch Wonderland.
Whoopie Pie Festival
September 19
A celebration all about Lancaster’s favorite confection! Enjoy a whoopie pie treasure hunt, amateur eating contest, creative pie-making contest, live entertainment, pony and hay rides, antique car cruise and much more!
Edgar Allen Poe Evermore (about 5,000 attendees)
October 30 – November 14
Special effects will spook you silly as the Victorian Mount Hope Mansion transforms into Poe’s house of interactive gothic theater entertainment.
Troops & Trains/ Swing Dance (about 1,800 attendees)
November 7
Learn from uniformed greeters about the role railroads have played in the defense of our nation. Then, ride the troop trains at the Strasburg Rail Road with reenactors from all eras of our military.
Dutch Winter Wonderland
November 20 – December 20 & December 26 - 30
The kingdom for kids is magically transformed, and the whole family will get into the spirit of the holidays with themed rides, games, thousands of twinkling lights, entertainment and family activities such as visits with Santa, storytelling with The Princess and s’more making.
Christmas in Hershey
Mid-November through early January
Hersheypark Christmas Candylane features more than one million twinkling lights, shopping, holiday entertainment, select rides, live reindeer and Santa. Nearby, take the Hershey Sweet Lights driving tour. Tune your radio to classic holiday favorites as you traverse the 2.3 mile course featuring over 600 lighted displays.
A Longwood Gardens Christmas
Late November through early January
Thousands of poinsettias, Christmas trees, and fragrant flowers in the indoor gardens, with concerts most days. Outdoors, 400,000 lights, and weather permitting, rainbow-hued fountains displays with seasonal music
Simply…Old-Fashioned Friday Nights (1,000 to 2,000 attendees per day)
Friday evenings, November 27 – December 18
Fun holiday fun for the whole family, with carriage rides and sleigh bells, strolling musicians, unique shopping and homemade foods.
Annual Holly Days (5,000 to 8,000 attendees per Saturday)
Saturdays, November 28-December 19
The Village's 33 crafts, artisans and food shop owners share their own cultural heritage. With music programs, food and craft demonstrations and old-fashioned activities like decorating cookies and making ornaments.
A Dickens of a Christmas (about 12,500 attendees)
November 27 – December 27
Victorian Mount Hope Mansion and the Dickensian characters will lift your holiday spirits with caroling, parlor games and theater shows. Free wine sampling!
Country Christmas Village (about 1,200 attendees)
Weekends in December
Experience Pennsylvania German contributions to Christmas with warm cider and cookies, holiday decorated trees and the Belsnickel - the folk character that evolved into our modern version of Santa Claus.
Downtown Holiday Weekends
First three weekends in December
A holiday house with Santa, horse-drawn carriage rides, holly trolley tours, a model train display, luminary night and more!
Mayor’s Tree Lighting
Late November / Early December
The official kickoff of the holiday season! Carolers and the infamous "Tuba Christmas" lend to the festivities.
Home for the Holidays
December 5, 12
A nostalgic glimpse at holiday rail travel, with costumed characters representing the past century. With seasonal music, festive decorations, Jack Frost Station and a Polar Express party for young children.
Santa’s Paradise Express
December 5, 12
Climb aboard Santa's authentic steam engine for a 45-minute journey through Pennsylvania Dutch Country, where you will sing carols and be warmed by a pot-bellied stove!
Holiday at Landis Valley, a PA Dutch Christmas (about 1,200 attendees)
December 18
Get in the holiday spirit as you tour holiday-decorated buildings to see customs of the past or sing traditional carols by the warmth of a bonfire. Enjoy cookies and mulled cider in the Yellow Barn.
Lantern Tours
December 26 - 29
Travel back in time to visit the Cloister as it may have appeared in the 1700s. Each year offers a new story with a cast of junior and senior high school students playing the roles that bring history to life.
Countdown Lancaster
December 31
Celebrate New Year's Eve with family-oriented entertainment, featuring more than 100 performers, plus fireworks and a grand finale to usher in the new year!
YEAR ROUND:
First Fridays (about 2,000 each Friday)
First Friday of each month
Visit more than 25 art galleries and museums and more than 20 shops, plus artist receptions at select galleries. Get around on the free First Friday Trolley!
Living the Experience: The Underground Railroad
Year-round
A spiritually, creative, living historical production of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. Intertwined in the production are the spirituals of a people searching for and leading Africans to a life of freedom.
www.livingtheundergroundrailroad.com
Theatre productions year-round at:
Sight & Sound Millennium Theatre and Sight & Sound Living
Waters Theatre, Strasburg
Rainbow Dinner Theatre, Paradise
Freedom Chapel Dinner Theatre, Christiana
www.freedomchapeldinnertheatre.com
Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre, Lancaster
American Music Theatre, Lancaster