Attend the Bluegrass Festival

One of our community’s biggest festivals, the Grande Levée at the Vandalia Statehouse, has been lost for at least this year, due to state budget cuts.

But local volunteers have been working feverishly over the past few months to organize a substitute festival, one that includes both a number of the popular attractions from the Grande Levée and new, unique activities.

The National Road Bluegrass Festival this Friday evening and throughout the day on Saturday will, of course, offer a lot of bluegrass music. Also on the slate are the Town & Country Art Show, performances by DePriest Puppets and “Doc” Morrissy, and children’s games and contests, popular attractions from the Grande Levée.

The new festival will also include arts and crafts booths, Taste of Vandalia food booths, old-fashioned baking contests, a barbecue cook-off, wagon and bicycle decorating contests, the Farm Bureau's National Trail River-to-River Motorcycle Run and an outdoor family movie.

All of those activities will be taking place on or near the Statehouse grounds. One exception is “Junk in the Trunk” in the city hall parking lot at 431 W. Gallatin St., during which local residents can purchase $5 spaces to sell items from the trunk of their cars or beds of their pickup trucks.

The festival will have something for everyone.

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