Excellent small "Appalachian" Festival in Enon Ohio…read more Competes with many other Ohio festival - draws a nice crowd with plenty of free parking. My wife delights in talking with the vendors and visiting every single booth. Greenon HS band leads the way. Lots of excellent food boths, both professional and mom and pop. We favor chicken and noodles, beans and corn bread, and porkchops. The nearby Sauerkraut festival is too much for us.

Happens every year. Lots of fun. Miles of booths and activities. A big deal for Troy. Gotta love…read moreit. It's been open since 6 PM today. It's going on all day tomorrow too. They've got a live band playing downtown. It's nice and cool outside. It's like 8:30 PM so the sun is almost setting. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

As festivals go, this is one of the better that I've been to. Tons of various food choices, scarfs,…read morecorn hole boards, signs, jewelry, leather goods, flags, lots of strawberry items, etc. I even had a nice talk with a Ranger from the Miami Valley Park system. It's a great way to spend a Saturday!

Every September the WACO museum hosts a fly-in. Museum is open, many planes, mostly WACOs, descend…read moreon town, rides are given, and more. I went a long while back and it was fun, and went today: still fun. Events for kids (candy drop, "train" rides.) Plenty of history for grownups. Food trucks. Events all weekend. Friendly staff. We had a blast. Save up for a spin in a plane.

Where do I begin with this amazing event? Let me start by saying the social media and website do…read morenot do justice for how much is truly here, and most everything is for FREE! The Wagner Subaru Outdoor experience is a free festival held the first weekend of October at Dayton's Eastwood Metropark. It is a festival celebrating all things outdoors and aiming to offer everyone the chance to experience it. Free parking. Free admission. Free activities. At the entrance there is registration and waiver release to participate in all the activities. The first activity near the entrance is a whole course to try mountain biking! Theres also regular cycling! Next is try canoeing, kayaking, or SUP (stand up paddleboard). How about trying climbing, rowing, or fly fishing?! But wait, theres STILL MORE! Try backpacking, bmx, slacklining, disc golf, and even orienteering. Already participate in outdoor activities? Bring your bikes, bring your kayaks or SUPs, and you can use your own gear. Theres even an entire campground that you can camp at for the weekend... for yep, free! Bring your dogs because theres a ton of fun activities for them. On Saturday AM there's a Dog 5k. Theres an agility course, treats, and in addition Subaru sets up an entire dog park and swim area (its huge!). Want dog petsitting while you participate? Theres pooch parking for free, for up to 90 mins! Bring your old gear for a swap, or find yourself some new to you stuff! Also many vendor booths are selling new gear. Entertainment?! There's no shortage of that! There's dock diving dog shows, bmx shows, slackline high wire shows, whitewater shows and competitions, and live music all day long. Dont forget the obstacle courses or scavenger hunt! You can take classes at the adult or youth outdoor school (see schedule). Walk around to the many vendor booths for freebies, info, or things to purchase. Wildlife? Theres live animal demonstrations and a giant aquarium! Worked up an appetite after all this? Head over to food truck village for a wide array of options and top it off with a cold one from the beer garden! Environment. The final special thing here is the focus on our planet. Theres no garbage cans, only waste stations with options for recycling, compost, or landfill. Theres no water bottles sold here, only free cold water fill stations with paper cups or bring your own. Beer cups? Nope. You must purchase a reusable stainless steel pint, which benefits the Mad River Ski mountain patrol. Several booths focus on info about how to help including compost at home, reusable straws for purchase, and the parks. This festival is a must attend, and again did I mention free? GET. OUTSIDE.

This is an absolute gem with so much to see it could really be multiple different museums…read more You enter the main building from the very spacious parking lot. You can get admission to just the site, add on admission to the Wright's home (offered on certain days for an additional charge) and also add on for the train or carousel rides. Overall, admission is very reasonable at $14 for adults and $10 per child. Worth it considering all that you can see and do at the site. There are a lot of historic buildings you can enter. Most have placards outside describing what their history is. Some of them had costumed interpreters in them and some with animatronics. (which my daughter declared as super creepy). In the main building, there are exhibits about the history of Dayton where you can learn things like that at one point, Dayton had the most patents of anywhere in the US and the cash register was invented here. It was cool learning about the area (even though we aren't from here). I imagine it would be even more impactful if you were local. There is also the Wright Brothers building with a ton of information about the Wright Brothers and more Wright artifacts than any other museum or location. Everything is very well maintained and all of the staff are friendly and just waiting to give you information about whatever area they are in. If you go to Dayton, make sure you visit here!

So, this place is awesome. It's like half railroad park, half Wright-brothers park, half historical…read moremuseum, and half outdoor garden-park. THAT'S FOUR HALVES!!!! I went here as part of a group, and they seem to get a lot of school field trips, but they're well organized, and it's a big place, so even with a ton of kids at the place, you don't feel like you're crowded. They have really great people working here, who are more than happy to answer your questions and explain things to you. I had like, fifteen minutes alone with the candle-maker lady and my son, and she entertained all of his questions and was really cool to talk with. They have a lot of Dayton-related history around NCR, and flight, and nuclear energy, and old automobiles. I bet it's a blast to work there. My favorite part though, was the outdoors area. It's just a really well maintained facility with lots of big old trees, and shade, and you can really just kick back and relax and chill out.

This is a nice but misnamed event. To me a better name might be Fairborn Beer Garden And Food…read moreTruck with some Bluegrass Gathering. To me in order to be a true Bluegrass Festival they need to make it a 2 to 3 day event and have some local vendors I'd suggest about 2 local music shops one of which sells high end instruments and another that sells high qualit lower priced instruments. I'd also suggest 2 to 4 local jewelry vendors that sell different types of jewelry that wouldn't compete with each other. I liked the Food Truck selection. Wholly Smokes is my favorite . I'd appreciate the opportunity to buy Festival T Shirts. I got a couple but several years I couldn't find one or they weren't available. One might ask what makes me an expert on Bluegrass Festivals. That's a fair question that deserves to be addressed. I was the Vendor Coordinator with Summergrass Bluegrass Festival for years. I did my job in good times and bad. While happily married, while grieving the loss of my wife , while going through a several relationships, I always did the best possible job I could while learning to do it. This event does bring some great Bluegrass to Fairborn. As I look into the crowd I see faces I've seen for years. It is an event I look forward to every year that has a lot of potential to be Ohios primeere Bluegrass Festival.

This is a biennial aviation display, not really an airshow per se, but well worth a visit. It is…read moregenerally in late September. Held behind the Air Force museum and accessible from that side or at the back gate off Airway Drive, there are replica WW1 planes flying, RC models, cars from the era, costumed reenactors, etc. It's free, with free parking, and is a nice way to spend a couple of hours on a weekend afternoon. This year it was honoring the centennial of the end of the war. There were vendors with books, models, toys, etc. Several food trucks served lunch. An announcer kept you posted on the flying, and provided historical tidbits. More laidback and less crowded than a typical airshow, very kid-friendly, and packed with aviation nerds like me.

Across the river from downtown in Dayton, Ohio, perched on a hill overlooking the river, is the…read moreDayton Art Institute. This world class art museum has Long been a staple and destination in this region. There are several notable and significant wings within the museum. The Dicke Wing of American Art most important holdings of American art. The Patterson-Kettering Wing is an impressive collection of Asian art, including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean works. While the Berry Wing is home to significant and important works from Europe. in addition, there are works from Oceania, Africa, and the ancient world. Outdoors there is an impressive curated sculpture garden. Historically well funded, the Dayton Art Institute is a world class destination museum, and if you are an art lover, and in this region, it is a must visit location.

Kid K saw a sign for this on the highway. Somehow I had never been. We circled back after our…read moreevent, and wow. The building is impressive and well-laid-out. The collection is large and interesting, and varied. Plus, they have many interactive areas for kids. They had several scavenger hunts, a play area downstairs, plus a craft area upstairs. Kid K loved it. Well, she was creeped out by some of the older European paintings. She seems to lean more to modern art. We spent a couple of hours and could easily have stayed longer. Staff were uniformly great, helpful and patient and friendly. Price is reasonable. Many cool sculptures outside. When we went they were preparing for a wedding, and this is a good place for something like that. Definitely will be back.