With fall in full swing, so is oyster festival season in the Tar Heel State. Though each oyster-oriented festival has its own character, they all typically offer music, contests involving oysters, food and beverage vendors, and lots of oysters for sale in various forms. Steaming buckets of the tasty bivalves are the most typical festival fare, but the oyster is often celebrated raw, fried and in rich stews, as well.

Whether it’s a traditional harvest festival, a grape stomp, bustling production activities, special tastings, or simply a crisp and colorful day in the countryside, fall is a great time of year to visit North Carolina vineyards and wineries. Here are some “grape” events happening around the state this fall.

Each fall, a wave of brilliant color starts in the North Carolina mountains, rolls across the central, urban landscapes of our state and eventually washes out at the coast. If you time it right, you can surf its entire length. Leaf-peeping season usually starts mid-September in the mountains and can last into November on the coast.

Forget crowds, relish cooler air and warm water, and get a little sand in your shoes on our beaches in the fall.

With more than 200 tree species under the bluest of skies, North Carolina puts on a kaleidoscopic show in the fall. But our state’s exceptional color comes from more than maples and sourwoods. Experience the full glory in myriad ways from the Blue Ridge Parkway to Atlantic Ocean piers.

Wilmington and its nearby beaches — Carolina, Kure and Wrightsville — shine bright in summer when visitors flock to this southern stretch of North Carolina’s coast for surf, cuisine, culture and history, some dating back nearly 300 years. But you’d be remiss if you didn’t consider planning a trip to this area outside of peak season. Autumn is a great time to experience all of Wilmington’s offerings with the bonus of milder weather, fewer crowds and seasonal rates at accommodations.

Whether your taste in music is rock, R&B, bluegrass, hip-hop, metal or somewhere in between, there’s a music festival in North Carolina that will have you dancing in the streets this fall. Any of these events will make for the highlight of a great weekend getaway.

There’s something around North Carolina perhaps best described as a “brew-spirit” that occurs when willing taste buds collide with lovingly created craft brews coming from more than 400 breweries here. Some of the best places to experience this spirit are the beer festivals that dot the Tar Heel landscape in the fall — and with October being NC Beer Month, there's even more of a reason to toast to the season.

Before booking your getaway in North Carolina for the fall season, you have a decision to make. Do you want to soak up the warm temperatures and summer-like appeal (but without the summer crowds) that usually continue through September or early October? Or would you rather witness colorful changing leaves during crisp weather as the calendar flips through October and November?

Spend a day at farms in North Carolina, where fruits are ripe for picking, pumpkins inspire the season and corn mazes add to the fun.