The latest issue of Travel and Leisure came in the mail today with a teaser on the cover for great fall trips. Inside the magazine the fall trips are all about the New England area, and their wine tours, antiques, fall foliage. I have yet to experience a New England fall and I am sure it is something phenomenal, but to be honest I have driven through several states during the fall and been floored by the beauty of the changing trees. Wisconsin with its unsuspecting hills suddenly shaped by fiery color offset by the lush green of grass fields. Even Missouri comes in and charms us with tree filled river valleys making us forget the heat and humidity that made us curse her all summer long. Needless to say the fall is a wonderful time of year for many pockets of the country and this means fall travel to wine festivals, autumn harvest and numerous other events.

One such event I like to take part in is the Hermann Missouri Oktoberfest. This festival runs every weekend in October and highlights the areas numerous wineries. Hermann is a small river town shaped predominately by its German heritage, and has led to the preservation and revitalization of numerous historic buildings. There are only two motels in Hermann, but they boast 529 bed and breakfasts.

During Oktoberfest visitors can pick up a map and move from winery to winery sampling wine and buying it by the bottle. The general vibe of Oktoberfest is just relaxed fun. Most of the wineries offer outdoor seating, food and live entertainment. In my mind there are few things better than sitting at a picnic table with some of my closest friends drinking wine, eating out of a picnic table and being completely absorbed by the surrounding beauty of the changing leaves. People are friendly; strangers share picnic tables and watch children and dogs roll down leaf scattered hills. I don’t want to blame it totally on the wine, but I think Oktoberfest makes us all sit back and remark about the silliness of our week day lives. We turn to history, a break in the weather to forget those unforgiving Missouri summers.
You can check out Hermann Missouri’s calendar and get other information here:
http://www.hermannmissouri.com/monthly.htm