Fall shoulder season highlights best of Cape Region

For a long, long time, Labor Day marked the end of the summer season here in the Cape Region. Businesses owners, having earned a year’s worth of revenue in six months, would take a collective sigh of relief and spend the week after the three-day holiday cleaning up the summer’s mess before boarding up for the winter. Having honed their summer tans at the beach and in the bays, second-home owners would spend the weekend winterizing their beach bungalows, before returning to the cities from which they came.

In one way, the holiday weekend still marks the end of summer because school is back in session. And sure, the weekday traffic on Route 1 and surrounding roadways has already started to decrease. However, the days of businesses closing up shop for the winter and second-home owners leaving town for the comforts of the city are long gone.

Now, the three-day weekend is a brief respite before the unofficial beginning of the area’s fall shoulder season. Local organizations and individuals looking to take advantage of the growing year-round population have taken notice. Included in the Friday, Sept. 2 edition of the Cape Gazette is the publication’s annual Fall Festivals Guide – a 100-plus-page magazine-style insert with dozens and dozens of family-themed events over the next four months.

From the Nanticoke Indian Association’s 44th annual Powwow the weekend of Saturday, Sept. 10, to the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce’s 32nd annual Sea Witch Festival beginning Friday, Oct. 28, to the annual holiday parades in Milton, Lewes and Rehoboth, there’s not a weekend that will go by from now until Christmas that something entertaining isn’t taking place. 

Born-and-raised locals might bemoan the continued increase of off-season events and traffic, but in reality, the fall shoulder season is a months-long celebration offering residents and visitors alike a real taste of what the Cape Region has to offer.