Atlanta Special Events

     When little white flower clusters start blooming on dogwood trees, you know spring has come to Atlanta. There's really no better way to celebrate than to attend the Dogwood Festival at Piedmont Park in early April. The arts and crafts festival has taken place since 1936 at the beginning of spring, when the trees are at their prettiest. In addition to a chance to admire the delicate blooms, the event includes an artists' market, hot air balloon floats and a disc dog competition.
     We wouldn't say that Atlanta is obsessed with flowers, but they do provide a nice excuse for a get-together. The Yellow Daisy Festival, at Stone Mountain Park in early September, honors the blooming of the Confederate yellow daisy, discovered in 1846 on the granite mountain. A giant arts and crafts show and a flower show are the main draws.
     Atlanta also times a number of outdoor festivals with the changing of the leaves, a spectacular event in itself. In early October, the U.S. Open Stock Dog Trials and Farm Festival draws polite crows from all over the Southeast to Dawsonville. Patterned after the original trials held in Great Britain, the competition invites the best of the working breed to round up cattle and sheep in front of a silent audience (an old English rule insists that spectators remain quiet while the dogs are working).
     Scottish folks won't want to miss the Stone Mountain Highland Games in mid-October, when festivalgoers don their family tartans and gather to the sounds of bagpipes flowing through the pine-shaded meadow at Stone Mountain Park.
     Atlanta's Festival of Trees, early December at the Georgia World Congress Center, kicks off the holiday season with decorated trees, wreaths and vignettes created by some of the city's top artists and designers. Locals rarely miss the Magical Night of Lights, mid-November through December at Lake Lanier Islands. Armed with car picnics containing hot cocoa and holiday treats, they head to this drive-through tour of one of the world's largest animated holiday light displays--the 6.5-mile route features more than a million lights.
     Nearby Marietta celebrates the season by decorating private homes and historic buildings in holiday finery and offering candlelight tours during the Marietta Pilgrimage Christmas Home Tour in early December. And Roswell invites everyone for guided historic home tours and to witness the lighting of the town square during Christmas in Roswell, late November through December. The best part? Actors re-enact the 1853 wedding of Mittie Bulloch and Theodore Roosevelt.