Jaunted

· The Great Highwood Pumpkin Festival – Highwood, Illinois:
There’s the chance to get a little exercise at this festival, because we’re sure you’ve already started to overdo it on the fun-size candy bars. The 5K Pumpkin Run is on October 22, but the festival runs from October 19 through October 23.

The main event is Saturday night’s lighting of the pumpkin walls—think many, many lighted pumpkins—as the festival tries to break a world record. Last year they lit like more than 26,000! The lighting takes place each night of the festival, and it’s usually done around 5:30pm or so. That leaves plenty of time to sample around 40 different offerings from food vendors, as well as time to carve your own gourd.

· Circleville Pumpkin Show – Circleville, Ohio:
Here it’s more about the pumpkins than the scary stuff associated with Halloween, as there's even a parade filled with floats dedicated to the orange orbs. This year’s events take place between October 19 and 22—apparently the weekend for pumpkin festivals.

The best part—at least to us—has got to be checking out the big, bad pumpkins. Past pumpkin heavyweights have weighed in at well over 1,000 pounds, and some even approach a ton weighing in at 1,622 pounds. Obviously these are look-but-don’t-touch specimens, but there is plenty of other stuff at this pumpkin party where you're free to be a little more hands-on.

[Photos: Official Sites]