Getting festive this fall!
Though the leaves are only barely beginning to change here in Providence, our first breaths of fall are here. If you’ve already picked up a chaider at Blue State or participated in the yearly Brown tradition of dressing warmly for a brisk morning and sweating buckets by your 1pm class, you might be wondering what else there is to do to get into the spirit of the season. Fall festivities can feel hard to access from inside the city, especially if you live on-campus or don’t have a long-suffering friend to nag about borrowing their car. Luckily, whether you’re trying to recreate your favorite traditions in the space of your dorm room or you’re looking to adventure beyond campus bounds, there’s lots of ways to enjoy the best of autumn in New England!
1. Pumpkin Party
a. Keeping it Cozy:
Painting pumpkins can be a great fall craft when pumpkin carving is too messy or time consuming. Rather than your classic orange carving pumpkin, look at Eastside Marketplace for some wacky colors and shapes to start from. Put down some copies of the BDH (you won’t read it anyway) and go ham! (And keep your eye out for a pumpkin give away on campus– in past years, some clubs have sponsored events for decoration, or even given away carving pumpkins for free!)
b. Go Big or Go Home:
You can always grab a carving pumpkin from Whole Foods or Eastside, but there’s plenty of places to go picking too! Salisbury Farm in Johnston is a great choice, with a hayride and a corn maze too for classic fall fun.
2. Farm Festivities
a. Keeping it Cozy:
For the flavor of fall without the hassle, you can make caramel chaider in your microwave. All it takes is one part apple cider, one part chai latte mix and 30 seconds (or a minute in weak dorm microwaves). Add a glug of caramel coffee syrup, and you’ll be dreaming caramel apple dreams.
b. Go Big or Go Home:
For a real fall festival this long weekend, Steere Orchard in Greenville is having their Applefest! Come visit hayrides and a fall farmers market, complete with live music. They also offer apple picking, naturally, throughout the season. Pick by the peck and make apple crisp!
3. Lanterns and Lights
a. Keeping it Cozy:
Fall decorations from CVS and Eastside can be a great way to liven up your room as the sun starts setting earlier in the day. But if you’re not the kind of person to want to spend $15 on mini-pumpkins or you’re frustrated with Brown’s dorm policies limiting your ability to show off your carving artistry, try making Halloween paper lanterns! With electric tea lights, you can dress up even newspaper lanterns into something frightening and festive.
b. Go Big or Go Home
All month the Roger Williams Park Zoo is hosting their walk-through Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular! This year’s theme is a celebration of music from the 1860s to today– make sure to reserve your tickets online in advance. Or, for a pleasant, cozy stroll, visit Rocky Point Blueberry farm in the final week of October. You can even submit an entry to their lantern contest yourself on October 26th, if you want to prove the worth of your visual arts degree. (It goes without saying that these are evening events– even the most impressive Jack-O-Lanterns look like summer camp art in the daytime.)
4. Spooks and Frights
a. Keeping it Cozy:
If want to keep it close to home but don’t mind a little bit of outdoor ambience, Providence Ghost Tour is a great way to get a good scare in. The tour will take you through both College Hill and downtown Providence, and it has stops on Brown’s campus that will make you think twice every time you pass University Hall. If you’d rather stay warm while you get spooked, HBOmax is still streaming Malignant, the best horror movie of the year, until October 10th.
b. Go Big or Go Home:
If a couple of ghosts isn’t enough for you and you want a real time terror experience, there are multiple haunted houses in the area to choose from. The Haunted Labyrinth in Cranston has more of a hometown feel (it’s run as a fundraiser event), and will probably be good for those looking for a mild fright. Those looking for a really frightening experience should check out Factory of Terror in Fall River, the scariest attraction in the Providence area. Make sure to bring someone to cower behind!
5. The Spirit of the Season
a. Keeping it Cozy:
Colder weather means an opportunity to appreciate the most important things in life– good friends and good food! Warm up some treats, grab your friends, and settle in to watch some fall film classics. Though AppleTV+ snatched up the rights to the Peanuts franchise (boooo), It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is available to rent on Vudu, and may be available elsewhere (yo ho ho).
b. Go Big or Go Home:
Leaf peeping, while totally a touristy thing to do, is the truly the best way to experience the beauty of fall in the Northeast. Prospect terrace is a good place to appreciate the new colors in the Providence skyline if you’d like to stay close to home, but especially if you’re from a climate where the leaves don’t change, make it into a day trip! Grab some friends and take an uber up to Lincoln Woods for a hike, or head down to Newport’s cliff-walk for a gorgeous glance at the leaves along the water. Rhode Island’s trees hit peak foliage color around the third week of October, which means this is the perfect activity for the upcoming long weekend.
Image via Lena He ‘24
