The gate at 1821 Crownsville Road has opened every fall since 1977, and this year is the Maryland Renaissance Festival's 50th season. That number is easy to read past. The festival is one of three slow builds in the same corner of Crownsville. The trail network at Bacon Ridge began with a single loop in 2015 and now anchors part of a 2026 national designation for Annapolis. The former Crownsville Hospital campus is early in a plan the county measures in years. Each one has a public edge you can use this month and a closed edge you can't, and telling the two apart makes the remaining festival weekends easier to plan.
Four weekends left, and they are not interchangeable
The festival runs 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on each day it operates, and the final dates are October 3 and 4, 10 and 11, 17 and 18, and 24 and 25. Every one of them falls under the Harvest Hollow theme, which brings seasonal decorations along Mary's Dale Way and spookier autumn performances. That is the whole of the October program, and it makes the four weekends look identical from the outside. They differ in a few practical ways.
| Weekend | What is different |
|---|---|
| October 3 and 4 | First Harvest Hollow weekend |
| October 10 and 11 | October 11 is an ASL day, with sign language interpretation for selected shows |
| October 17 and 18 | Regular Harvest Hollow programming |
| October 24 and 25 | Final weekend of the 50th season |
Two other details are worth having before a guest asks. Tickets are sold online only and by date, and nothing is sold at the gate. CBS Baltimore reported in late August that tickets for upcoming weekends are released on Mondays and Fridays, and that sold-out dates carry a waitlist. Beverages and games are cash only, which Eye On Annapolis noted in its coverage of the 50th season. As The Banner reported in July 2026, a single adult ticket came to $36.14 after the 10 percent amusement tax and the ticketing vendor's fee, against a listed base price of $31.
The 2026 storyline gives a returning visitor something to follow. King Henry VIII arrives with his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, for Revel Grove's 50th Harvest Festival. Village gossip says the marriage is already strained, and the king must decide whether to renew the village's 50-season royal charter or award it to a rival called Tiddington. The festival runs three combat jousts each day in its 3,000-seat arena.
The morning belongs to Bacon Ridge
The festival closes at 7 p.m. Bacon Ridge Natural Area closes at sunset, and the county's posted rules also require leashed pets and prohibit alcohol. As October shortens the days, the park works as a morning stop and the festival works as the afternoon one.
The trail system is younger than it feels. The first phase, 2.5 miles of natural-surface singletrack off Hawkins Road, was built in the summer and fall of 2015 and was the first of its kind in Anne Arundel County. Phase 2 added more than 4.5 miles in 2016. Volunteers from the Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts, known as MORE, built and maintain the network, which now covers 20-plus miles across more than 1,100 acres of county parkland. Phase 1 from the Hawkins Road trailhead at 1822 Hawkins Road is the beginner-friendly stretch, with few roots and no rock. The central access at 1350 Bacon Ridge Road serves Phases 2 and 3.
On March 31, 2026, the International Mountain Bicycling Association named 28 communities to its inaugural Trail Town class. Annapolis was one of them, and the city's April 2 release tied the designation to Waterworks Park, with more than 10 miles of trails, and the 20-plus miles at Bacon Ridge. The two systems sit about 1.5 miles apart by road, from the Hawkins Road trailhead to the Waterworks northern trailhead on Honeysuckle Lane. MORE's parking guidance for that connection is specific. Use Generals Highway Corridor Park for the northern access, and do not park on Honeysuckle Lane or on Gomoljak Lane, a private road where cars are towed at the owner's expense.
Two cautions belong here. MORE and trail listings ask riders to stay off the trails when they are wet, and the surface is muddy after rain, so the morning loop depends on the previous day's weather. The Severn Chapel Road entrance to the Bike Park was listed as closed for construction in late August. That fits the county's project to add the 150-acre former Forney property to Bacon Ridge, which the county page last updated on May 26, 2026. The Hawkins Road and Bacon Ridge Road trailheads remained open, and the county page is the place to check before driving out.
Where dinner fits
Lures Bar & Grille at 1397 Generals Highway is a Crownsville sit-down option for after the festival. It pours 27 beers on tap, and its menu is updated seasonally with a coastal lean. Owners Chuck and Jill Soja opened it on Mother's Day 2008, according to a 2015 Annapolis Home profile. Hours are the one detail to confirm. Older write-ups describe late-night hours, while listings updated in mid-2026 show 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday. With a 7 p.m. festival close and a parking lot full of cars leaving at once, a call to (410) 923-1606 before the drive is worth the minute.
Herald Harbor Hideaway is the other Crownsville name in this stretch, and it covers a different situation. It serves American comfort food with frequent live entertainment, and it is open for carryout daily, which suits a group that would rather eat at home after a long day on the festival grounds.
The 500 acres down the road
The third slow project has the smallest public edge, and it deserves a sober description. Anne Arundel County acquired the roughly 500-acre former Crownsville Hospital site from the State of Maryland in December 2022. The hospital operated from 1911 to 2004 and was established as a segregated facility. The county's final master plan came out in February 2025. A preliminary cost analysis put the project at roughly $67 million, not counting the razing and stabilizing of buildings, and WMAR reported that creating a "Path of Reverence" and a wider trail system is projected to take more than five years.
The construction record so far is concrete. On July 16, 2026, the county finished replacing the campus water mains, with new fire hydrants and meters for each tenant, about seven months ahead of the February 2027 target. The Nonprofit Center at 41 Community Place opened in August 2025. In September 2025 the county unveiled the "Say My Name" Memorial, which recognizes more than 1,700 patients who lived and died at the hospital between 1912 and 1965, many of them buried in unmarked graves. The work to recover their names was led by Janice Hayes-Williams and the Friends of Crownsville Hospital Patient Cemetery, which has held annual "Say My Name" ceremonies since 2005.
The campus itself is not open to the general public. The Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage Area points visitors to a small pocket park at the corner of Crownsville Road and North Drive, across from the Administration Building, where four storyboards tell the site's story. The county's park page also lists public access options for the patient cemetery through the Bacon Ridge Natural Area page. None of the sources gives an opening date for the park, so any timeline heard secondhand should be treated as unconfirmed.
A festival in its 50th season, a trail system that grew from one 2.5-mile loop in 2015 into part of a 2026 Trail Town designation, and a hospital site whose build-out plan stretches past five years will all still be working on Crownsville after the gates close on October 25. Of the three, the four storyboards at Crownsville Road and North Drive are the part of the hospital site open to visitors now.
Colleen Smith is glad to trade notes on Crownsville's fall, from which trailhead suits a first ride to where the group should eat afterward. Let's Connect.
