August is running out. Two more weekends follow this one before Labor Day, and neither of them is stacked like this: a Gold Coast estate full of bagpipes, four nights of Greek festival on a Port Jefferson hillside, and the opening day of the horse show that has closed out the East End summer for decades. Here is where the next three days are worth your drive.

Highland games take over Old Westbury Gardens on Saturday

The Long Island Celtic Festival and Highland Games runs Saturday, August 22 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Old Westbury Gardens, and it is the rare festival that actually uses its setting. The heavy athletics, the caber toss among them, happen on the lawns of a Gold Coast estate, with pipe bands echoing off the manor house. The day celebrates Ireland, Scotland and Wales alike in its music and dance lineups. It is a full-day, family-friendly event, and the gardens themselves are worth the ticket on an ordinary Saturday, which this is not.

Port Jefferson goes Greek through Sunday

The Port Jefferson Greek Festival is already underway at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption, 430 Sheep Pasture Road, and it runs through Sunday, August 23. The church kitchen turns out homemade Greek standards and pastries all festival long, Vasili's Taverna handles the sit-down side, and there are carnival rides and a raffle for the kids and the optimists. This is one of the North Shore's most reliable food weekends: come hungry, leave with a box of loukoumades you did not plan on.

The Hampton Classic opens Sunday in Bridgehampton

Sunday, August 23 is opening day for the Hampton Classic Horse Show at 240 Snake Hollow Road in Bridgehampton, the start of a week that runs through August 30 and ends the East End summer the way it has for decades. The competition is genuinely world class, with FEI five-star show jumping at the top of the card, but the first days belong to the locals: quieter grounds, easier parking, and riders of every level in the ring. If you have always meant to see it and never wanted to fight Grand Prix Sunday, the front end of the week is the move.

Billy Joel's band plays Riverhead on Saturday

The Lords of 52nd Street play The Suffolk in Riverhead on Saturday, August 22 at 8 p.m. The band is built around Long Island musicians who recorded and toured with Billy Joel through his defining years, and hearing that catalog played by people who helped build its sound, on a downtown Riverhead stage, is a different thing from a tribute act. The Suffolk's weekend is strong on either side too, with CeCe Teneal's Divas of Soul on Friday and 10,000 Maniacs on Sunday.

Take a boat to the Huntington Lighthouse on Sunday

Sunday, August 23 is one of the last tour dates of the season at the Huntington Lighthouse, the concrete sentinel that stands in open water at the mouth of Huntington Harbor. Tours leave by boat from Gold Star Battalion Beach on West Shore Road between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., weather and wind permitting, and run about 75 minutes including the climb up the tower. Adults pay 35 dollars, seniors 30, kids 5 to 12 pay 25. After this weekend, only two September dates remain this year. Most Long Islanders have only ever seen this lighthouse from a boat deck or a beach towel. Standing on top of it is better.

A steakhouse 25 years in the making opens Friday in Huntington

Not an event, but worth building a Friday night around: Luca Steak is slated to open Friday, August 21 in Huntington village, in the space where Red fed the town for a quarter century. New name, serious pedigree, and the first weekend of a restaurant like this is its own kind of theater. If the dining room is booked, the bar is the traditional workaround.

The shape of the weekend

Saturday belongs to the west and the pipes, Sunday to the East End and the horses, and Port Jefferson will feed you any night you show up. None of these need a rain date except the lighthouse boat, so check the wind before you drive to Huntington. Summer has two more weekends after this one. This is the one trying hardest.