Wooly Worm Festival

We came up to the High Country of North Carolina to attend the Woolly Worm Festival.

Here's how the event got started...according to the Avery County website:

"Back in the late 1970s, the editor of the now-defunct Mountain Living Magazine, Jim Morton, was preparing to include a Woolly Worm Forecast in the winter issue of the magazine. He photographed the first Woolly Worm he saw to use in formulating the prediction and illustrating his story, but the next day he saw a second worm that looked completely different from the first.

'That's when it struck me that we needed some formal procedure to use to decide which was going to be the official worm for making the winter forecast,' said Morton. "

And so, the event was born!

There are craft vendors, food vendors with specialities like funnel cakes, smoked turkey drumsticks, and more. But, the most important part of the day is the worm races. You can purchase and name your worm. About 25 worms at a time race. The way it works is that you purchase and name your worm, go to the stage and when the announcer says "go", you put your worm on a string. The goal is to see which worm gets to the top of the string first. The best part is watching the people cheer on their worms. They clap, they yell, they cajole, they threaten. It's very competitive. Sometimes the worm just hangs on, going nowhere. Other times, the worm will climb up almost to the top, only to climb down to the bottom.

At the end of the weekend, all of the finalists race each other and the fastest worm wins. Then that worm is used to predict the weather for the winter. Gee, I wonder what kind of winter we will have...

PS. I almost forgot to tell you...my favorite part of the day is not listening to the hilarious names of the worms or watching the crazy people cheering their worms onto victory. My favorite part is watching people tote around special "worm houses" that you can buy for your worm after your worm has done its work. People walk around, carrying these boxes, filled with their trusty worm.