Riverfront Fall Festival is planned for October in Cape Girardeau

Visit Cape's inaugural Riverfront Fall Festival will take place in October and feature local vendors, entertainment for all ages and storytelling by the Mississippi River.

Alyssa Phares-Fee, senior director of sales and strategy for Visit Cape, came up with the idea of hosting a festival after realizing the city does not host an annual community event during the fall.

"We kind of incorporated things that we enjoy and we know the community enjoys, which is having live music, having kids activities, and we used to have a Storytelling Festival. So, we thought how could we incorporate that into the festival, maybe not as the main thing, but as one of the entertainment options, and then I realized we could host the event by the riverfront and have the Mississippi River as the backdrop for whoever does the storytelling performance," Phares-Fee said.

The Riverfront Fall Festival will be from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 22 at Riverfront Park and on Water Street in Cape Girardeau.

She said October is a difficult month to organize events that do not compete with the annual Vintage Now! fashion show and Southeast Missouri State University's Homecoming, so the members of Visit Cape picked Oct. 22 to avoid conflicts.

Organizers from Cape Girardeau had previously hosted a festival called Riverfest, which began in 1979. The event was canceled in 2000 and has not been held since. Riverfest included a fish fry, musical acts and vendors selling wares to the public.

Riverfront Fall Festival will begin with an opening ceremony involving fan-fare around a certain pumpkin, which Phares-Fee wanted to keep under wraps until the festival occurs.

Musical performances will include Steve Shafner & the Jumper Cables, Maggie Thorn, the Jason Heeter Band, Logan Chapman and the Ivas John Band.

Joel Rhodes and Christy Mershon will give storytelling performances as the river flows behind them.

"I am really excited for that moment at dusk when we have Christy Mershon and Dr. Joel Rhodes down by the river," she said. "I was actually an intern for the very first Storytelling Festival in college and I just remember the feeling of when that person got up there on stage and started to weave a tale and seeing the crowd and their laughs and their smiles and their eyes light up."

Entertainment for children will include face painting, fall-themed crafts, a balloon-animal artist and a kids and pet costume contest.

Vendors at the fall festival will sell handmade items by locals, including candles, pottery, wood carvings, food and jewelry.

Phares-Fee said organizers are still looking for someone who produces leather work, a local photographer to sell their photographs, as well as someone who will be the fall festival town crier.

Multiple downtown Cape Girardeau restaurants will sell food to patrons of the event throughout the day and a yoga session will also be held by the river at the beginning of the festival.

"I want people to experience our downtown and our riverfront and feel a sense of pride in our community," she said. "We are going to have every cheesy festival thing you can think of. Everything you've ever seen in a movie with a festival, I want it there. We live in an extraordinary place. Cape Girardeau is just a wonderful place to live, work and visit. I just want to remind people of that and hopefully introduce some newcomers to Cape Girardeau who come to town for the festival."

For more information, go to www.visitcape.com/fall-festival.