Helicopters in the Morning, Flashlights After Dark: Murfreesboro’s Busiest Family Weekend This Fall
Mid-October delivers Murfreesboro's densest family weekend of the fall. Three separate events across two days, and with a little planning you can do all of them without anyone melting down.
Tennessee STEAM Festival at the airport — Saturday, October 17, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Murfreesboro Municipal Airport hosts its STEAM Festival morning alongside the Discovery Center, and the pitch is refreshingly simple: a field full of aircraft and emergency vehicles, with exhibitors letting families climb in and put hands on the controls.
On display: an AH-64E Apache from the 101st Airborne, a UH-60 Blackhawk from the Tennessee Army National Guard, a Vanderbilt LifeFlight helicopter, member-owned experimental aircraft, jet and piston engines, and Murfreesboro Police and Fire and Rescue vehicles. The Experimental Aircraft Association chapter runs a how-airplanes-fly station and flight simulators. MTSU brings its DA-40 along with its aircraft maintenance lab and drone operations.
Science, technology, engineering, art and math, delivered in the only format a seven-year-old actually wants it: sitting in a helicopter.
Cannonsburgh Village After Dark — Friday, October 16 and Saturday, October 17, 6 to 9 p.m.
Cannonsburgh is a good afternoon any time of year. After dark in October it is something else entirely. Bring a flashlight, work through the hunt in the dark corners of the log cabins, and stop for hot drinks and sweet treats between the fall crafts, games and music. Costumes are welcome.
Cost: $5 per person, free for ages 5 and under. Tickets are available online in advance for either night, or at the gate.
Worth saying plainly, because parents of small kids always want to know: this is a flashlight hunt, not a haunted attraction. It plays well for elementary age and younger. Nobody is jumping out at anyone.
How to stack them
The clean version is Friday night at Cannonsburgh, then Saturday morning at the airport — you get the after-dark event when there is no school the next day, and the tarmac in the cooler part of the morning.
If Friday is out, Saturday can absolutely hold both: airport from nine to one, a long afternoon gap for lunch and a nap, then Cannonsburgh at six. That is a full day, but the gap in the middle is what makes it survivable.
Everything above is on our new Family Events calendar, which we are building out with kid- and all-ages-friendly events across Murfreesboro and Rutherford County.
