Hundreds of people, if not several thousand, lined Limestone Street on Saturday for the annual Peach Festival Parade. Lasting more than an hour, the parade featured everything from local dignitaries to “hillbilly” jalopies, Peach Festival beauty pageant winners, antique tractors and fire trucks. (Ledger photos / TIM GULLA) It didn’t quite end the way anyone hoped it would.

With Lake Whelchel as a scenic backdrop, hundreds of people with folding chairs and blankets came outdoors Saturday evening for the Peach Beach concert and the close of yet another Peach Festival.

Just a few minutes into the first performance of the evening, however, a fastmoving lightning storm bore down with little warning on the concert site, sending people running for shelter and tearing the tarp off the concert stage, which was loaded with electronic equipment.

“Everything got wet,” one person said.

For Tee Wayne Abshire and his family, a trip to Gaffney was not only worthwhile but memorable. Abshire's well-seasoned Tee Wayne's Smokin' Lipps barbecue competition team took 1st place in chicken, 4th place in pork, 6th place in brisket and 9th place in ribs and was crowned the overall Grand Champion of the two-day Cherokee County Peach Festival barbecue competition. A team effort, Abshire said his wife recently made some recipe adjustments they'll no doubt stick with going forward. Pictured are Tee Wayne and Christy Abshire and their children Mary and Matthew. The show, unfortunately, couldn’t go on.

Regardless of the abrupt ending, however, organizers were overall pleased with the way this year’s Peach Festival turned out. “We felt like everything was successful,” said festival vice-chairman Dennis Stroupe. “To me, that’s the highlight — that everything in combination was a success and that the public enjoyed it.”

Hundreds if not thousands turned out for the biggest events, such as the annual Peach Festival Parade on Limestone Street.

And several of the Peach Festival’s competitions grew by considerable margins.

At the Peach Festival’s Road Race in the historic district, event organizer Livia Hazlette had a record turnout of about 400 racers, about 75 more than last year.

Rattling off the home towns of competitors in this year’s race, Hazlette noted that some people came from as far away as Connecticut, Wisconsin and Arizona.

“I would love to have (the race) increase by 100 every year,” she said with enthusiasm.

At the Peach Festival’s Barbecue Competition, now in its second year, judges from the Kansas City Barbecue Society got to sample the best offerings of nearly 50 competitors trying to be named the best of the best when it came to serving up brisket, pork, chicken and ribs.

Attendance at the barbecue event was up nearly 50 percent and its grand champion, Tee Wayne Abshire, traveled along with his family to Gaffney from St. Amant, La.

Abshire, who pumped his fist when named grand champion, labeled his performance in a region rich with pork barbecue cooks and recipes “very humbling.”

One of the biggest changes for this year’s Peach Festival was the use of the Big Mill site for many of the events. While it’s not yet clear if the countyowned property will be available again next year, organizers liked the location.

“It allowed us to put everything in one place and we received a lot of compliments from the crowd and vendors,” Stroupe said.

Even as he was helping clean up the site on Sunday, Stroupe was coming up with new ideas for next year.

“We have to take what we’ve learned, capitalize on it and make it grow,” he said.