I have been itching to attend the annual Parke County Covered Bridge Festival for a couple years now, but have not summoned the courage to face the crowds, until now.
The Parke County Covered Bridge Festival is a huge flea market-ish festival that starts on the second Friday in October and runs 10 days. The festival showcases the county’s 31 historic covered bridges and has venders ranging from arts and crafts, comfort food, clothes, home goods, and pretty much anything else you could ever imagine. You can check out the official website here.
There are several different locations you can visit including: Mansfield, Bridgton, Rockville, Bellmore. Rosedale, Mecca, Motezuma, Billie Creek Village, Bloomingdale, and Tangier. I have only been to the Mansfield, Bridgeton, and Rockville locations and would recommend any of those 3! All of the locations are pretty close to each other, since they are all in the same county, so you could definitely hit up multiple locations in one day.
Matt and I really just attended the festival to walk around and look. The weather was perfect and the changing leaves peaked in the color when we went during the last weekend of the festival. We went on the second to last day and most of the venders had their items on CRAZY sale discounts! Here are some of our favorite items that we came across!
Favorite Finds
- Authentic perfumes at great prices – I am usually not one for buying a designer fragrance anywhere but Sephora or Ulta, but my favorite scent, Burberry Brit Sheer, is becoming harder and harder for me to find. When I walked into The Big Tent, the first vender I can across was a huge fragrance seller who had hundreds of authentic perfumes at great prices! I was able to find my favorite perfume for only $45.
- Bombas socks – We love Bombas socks in our household and were excited to find a vender selling them for $3 a pair or 2 for $5.
- Titlest Gold Bag – This here was a boyfriend favorite find! Authentic Titlest golf bags for $125. The seller was a wholesale reseller and said the factory had ordered too big of a shipment and sold him half of a semi of bags at a great price, and he was therefore, able to offer them at such a great price.
- Designer Sunglasses – We can across a tent with Rayban and Oakley sunglasses for $30/pair. I am always skeptical there are fake, but my boyfriend thought they looked very genuine. We almost bought a pair, but decided we didn’t need yet ANOTHER pair of sunglasses.
I recommend bringing cash! It was $5 cash to park. Most venders do accept card and cash, but it is always good to have a little cash in your pocket when going to bridge festival.
The food options seemed endless. There is so much to choose from. We surprisingly didn’t grab any food while we were there, but we did stop by a small restaurant within the festival for a few beers and seltzers. There was a live band too that was actually so good! It was such a fun way to send a Saturday.
