Hocking Hills Area Lodging

10/10/2026

09/09/2026

Every October a town of about thirteen thousand people in Pickaway County takes on a few hundred thousand visitors across four days. 🎃

The Circleville Pumpkin Show started in 1903 as a small gathering the mayor put together downtown, and it has never stopped. It calls itself the Greatest Free Show on Earth, and the free part is real. No admission, no gate, no ticket. You park somewhere questionable and you walk in.

The whole downtown closes and fills with stands. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin doughnuts, pumpkin fudge, pumpkin burgers, pumpkin chili, pumpkin ice cream, and one enormous pumpkin pie made several feet across that is a spectacle before anybody gets a slice. There are seven parades over four days, including one that is just for pets. And there is the weigh in, where growers roll in giant pumpkins on flatbed trailers and the winners come in well over a thousand pounds, a number that does not really register until you are standing next to one.

The thing that gets people is how unglossy it is. The same families run the same stands for generations. Kids on shoulders. Somebody's high school band coming down the street slightly out of step.

Have you been to the Pumpkin Show, and what do you eat first when you get there?

08/27/2026

🎃 Every October a Pickaway County town of roughly fourteen thousand people hosts several hundred thousand visitors over four days, and it has been pulling this off since 1903.

The Circleville Pumpkin Show calls itself the Greatest Free Show on Earth, and it means the free part literally. No admission, no gate, no charge to walk in. There are seven parades across the four days. There is a giant pumpkin weigh off where the winning entries have gone well past a thousand pounds. And there is the pie, baked in a pan wide enough that it takes a crew to move it, plus pumpkin burgers, pumpkin fudge, pumpkin donuts, and a few things that have no business being pumpkin flavored and somehow are anyway.

It started as a small merchant display on a street corner and just never stopped growing. 🍂 If you go, park far away and walk, and do not fill up before you get to the part you actually came for.

Which Ohio festival do you go to every single year without fail?

07/30/2026