🗞️ Twenty Kernersville veterans and guardians fly on the year's third Triad Honor Flight

🗞️ UNCSA animation students sketch classic cars at the Kernersville Auto Museum

🗞️ NC DMV stops mailing license plate stickers and registration cards Oct. 1

🗞️ Your Saturday game plan: a sunny day packed with festivals

☀️ Sunny | High: 78°F | Low: 50°F

About as nice as a late-September Saturday gets. Expect wall-to-wall sunshine, a light northwest breeze and a high near 78, with a clear, comfortable evening for the swing dance. Sunday looks just as pretty, sunny with a high near 78.

About 1,200 people packed Piedmont Triad International Airport on Wednesday night to welcome home 104 local veterans returning from a day in Washington, D.C., on the Triad Honor Flight. Twenty of the veterans and guardians on board were from Kernersville, including Air Force veteran Al Trippe and his wife, Patricia.

It was the third Triad Honor Flight this year, the first time the group has made more than two trips in a single year. "The intention was to get more people off our wait list," said Triad Honor Flight Director Allison Dewitt Huber. The list topped 1,000 names before this year's flights and is now down to 828, though new applications keep coming in. "I got one from Kernersville and one from Stokesdale just today," she said.

Veterans toured the memorials, including a stop at Arlington for the wreath laying and changing of the guard, where two Korean War veterans and two Purple Heart recipients took part. Most said Arlington was their favorite. Huber said strangers along the way stopped to clap and shake hands with the group. "Many of our veterans, particularly the Vietnam veterans, never got a welcome home, and that is where it comes full-circle," she said. "For some this was the first time they were welcomed home."

Motorcycle riders from the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, cheerleaders, a children's dance team and High Point University's mascot were all part of the homecoming crowd. The first Triad Honor Flight of 2027 is set for April 18.

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A group of UNC School of the Arts students traded the classroom for the showroom floor this month, spending a day drawing the collection at the Kernersville Auto Museum. Instructor Tom Lisowski said he found the museum while touring the area and knew it would be a great fit for his animation and production design students.

Owner Jim Taylor, who opened the free, nonprofit museum in April 2022 with 15 of his own cars, now has 53 cars from eight countries, from a 1921 Model T Depot Hack to a 2023 Corvette. The museum drew 5,200 visitors last year, and Taylor expects to top that in 2026. "They can't believe the little town of Kernersville has such a nice museum of automobile history," he said.

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Starting Thursday, Oct. 1, North Carolina drivers who register or renew a vehicle will no longer get a license plate sticker or an automatically printed registration card. A new state law moves vehicle registration to an electronic system, and the DMV says police already check registration status electronically. The agency says the change will save printing and mailing costs and cut down on sticker fraud.

Drivers can still renew online, by mail, in person at a license plate agency or at a self-service kiosk, and the DMV will keep mailing renewal notices about 90 days before a registration expires. Anyone who wants a paper registration card can download and print one for free from the DMV website.

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With sunshine and a high near 78, today is a good one to be out. Here's how the day lines up, hour by hour.

9 a.m.: Piney Grove Elementary Fall Festival opens at 1500 Piney Grove Road (until 1 p.m.). Bring gently used shoes for the fifth-grade shoe drive.

10 a.m.: First Baptist's drive-up food drive for Crisis Control Ministry starts at 401 Oakhurst St. (until 1 p.m.), and Oak Ridge Heritage Day fires its first cannon at Oak Ridge Town Park (until 4 p.m.).

1 p.m.: The third annual Kernersville Renaissance Festival gets going at The Brewer's Kettle, 308 E. Mountain St.

4 p.m.: Books & Brews Book Club meets at Gypsy Road Brewing, 1105 E. Mountain St. (until 5:30 p.m.).

7 p.m.: A free lesson kicks off the Swing Dance Social with the Greensboro Big Band at VFW Post 5352, 618 Edgewood St., with dancing from 8 to 11 p.m.

It's also the last day of the Fountain of Life Preschool consignment sale at 323 Hopkins Road.