WV Cupcake Festival

Three days each August, Valley Park in Hurricane fills with the kind of community sweetness that charity events rarely sustain. The festival runs Thursday evening through Saturday, free to enter, with regional bakeries and home bakers competing across two separate competitions: the Master Vendor Cupcake Competition, where professional bakeries vie for Queen’s Choice and Best Tasting honors, and an amateur contest running alongside it. Betti’s Sweet Treats of Hurricane took the 2024 Master Vendor crown, with Amy’s Cool Cakes and Catering of Ona and Super Love Sweets of Culloden rounding out the field. Past live acts have included Rewind The Walkman, Corduroy Brown, and Weekend Warriors. Saturday morning opens with the Cupcake Chase 5K at 8:00 AM, where runners decorate cupcakes at stations along the route and compete for best-decorated awards alongside the finish line results. The festival has donated 100 percent of proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s local chapter, contributing $5,000 in 2024 alone.

Arrive before 10:00 AM on Saturday. Popular flavors sell out from vendor tents by midmorning, and parking in the valley fills fast. Bring cash for full-size cupcakes beyond the samples, and expect warm, humid conditions in the mid-80s with afternoon storms a real possibility.

The water angle here requires a short drive but rewards the effort. The Coal River Water Trail offers 17 maintained launch points across three branches managed by the West Virginia DNR, making it one of the more extensive flatwater paddling networks in the region. Beech Fork Lake, 28 miles out, carries 760 acres with a swimming beach and boat rentals. For a lakeside base to anchor the weekend, Lake Chaweva’s gated chalet community offers private docks and hot tubs through vacation rental platforms, or search Lake.com for waterfront properties within range of the Kanawha Valley.