Group will skip 2025
Cloud cover and rain proved a bit of a letdown last fall when a local veterans advocacy group staged an annual balloon festival in Alamance County’s Cedarock Park.
But the members of Graham-based Alcovets have resolved to soldier on with this yearly tradition – albeit about eight months later than they had planned to hold the event.
Richard Shevlin, the president of Alcovets, appeared before Alamance County’s commissioners on Monday to announce that he and his colleagues have decided to wait until the spring of 2026 to reprise the annual festival.
“Through conversations with people in the community, we’ve decided not to have a ballon festival this year in the fall,” Shevlin went on to admit. “Our plan is to move it to the Mother’s Day weekend because, back in the day, that’s when it was, and the weather is more predictable.”
Similar calculations also compelled the city of Burlington to reschedule its annual Carousel Festival from September to May after it completed the restoration of the festival’s eponymous Dentzel Carousel in 2022. This move has nevertheless backfired as dreary weather in the beginning of May has led to disappointing turnouts during recent iterations of the event. The city’s recreation department is nevertheless hoping that Mother Nature will be more cooperative for this year’s two-day festival, which is slated to begin on Saturday, May 3.
As for Alcovet’s springtime trial balloon, Bobby Chin, a member of the group who also serves on Graham’s city council, asked the commissioners to mark their calendars for the third weekend in May, 2026.
