Off to the festival

Published 11:34 pm Thursday, October 6, 2011

There’s no excuse for boredom this weekend.

If you need a reason to have fun, here it is: The Suffolk Peanut Festival is here, and it will only be open through Sunday. And fun is what this festival is all about. Well, that and peanuts, of course.

Whether your thing is crashing cars or country stars, the Ferris wheel or fried cornmeal, peanut butter or a monocled nutter — there’s something at the 34th annual Peanut Festival for you to enjoy.

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Games, competitions, bands, rides, exhibitions, commercial booths and, of course, food. They’ve all been combined into a four-day event that is truly Suffolk’s premier function of the year. It’s a not-to-be-missed distillation of all the things that make Suffolk unique, presented for the enjoyment of the city’s citizens and its visitors, as many as 200,000 people by some estimates.

But don’t let the crowds worry you. Suffolk police and the festival volunteers have worked long, hard hours to set things up so that the festival will be safe and enjoyable for all ages. And with so many things to do spread out all over the grounds of the Suffolk Executive Airport, there’s always somewhere to find relief from the shoulder-to-shoulder of the midway.

Peanut Fest was named this year as one of the nation’s 50 Best Food Festivals by the folks at Parade magazine. Come out and see for yourself how the festival earned its rank. There’s hardly a better way in Hampton Roads to celebrate the coming of fall.