STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Trailing of the Sheep Festival has been nominated by USA TODAY for Best Fall Festival. And you get to have a say.
The festival was selected as one of 20 nominees by a panel of travel experts and USA Today Editors for the 2023 USA TODAY 10 Best Readers’ Choice Award for Best Fall Festival.
This year’s nominees include the Bayfield Apple Festival in Wisconsin, the Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta in Maine, the Fruita Fall Festival in Colorado, the North Carolina Pecan Harvest Festival, the Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival in Stowe and the Hood River Valley Harvest Festival in Oregon.
Readers from across the country are being asked to vote online. Voters may vote online once a day through Sept. 4 at https://www.10best.com/awards/travel/best-fall-festival-2023/
The 27th annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival, which started out as a simple way to educate Wood River Valley residents about the sheep trailing that takes place in the valley every spring and fall, will be held Oct. 4-8 this year.
New this year is a Sheep Reads annual book club. Readers will be encouraged to read Robert Laxalt’s “Sweet Promised Land” and join Festival co-founder Diane Peavey for a book discussion at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 7.
The festival will also feature cooking and wool crafting classes, a Folklife Fair with dancing, music and arts and crafts and sheep dog trials leading up to the Trailing of the Sheep Parade through Ketchum on Sunday, Oct. 8.
Learn more at https://trailingofthesheep.org/