This is the last weekend of August, and Long Island is closing the month the way it should: with a 93-year-old legend on the boardwalk stage at Jones Beach, the first apples of the season coming off North Fork trees, and the horse show that has ended every East End summer for half a century riding its $400,000 finale. Labor Day weekend is still a week out. This is the one to spend outside. Here is where the next three days are worth your drive.

Willie Nelson plays Jones Beach on Friday, at 93

The Outlaw Music Festival pulls into Northwell at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh on Friday, August 28, and the headliner needs no selling: Willie Nelson and Family, with Willie at 93 years old and still touring on his own terms. The undercard would carry a lesser bill on its own, with The Avett Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Stephen Wilson Jr. and Robert Randolph all playing sets, and the music starts at 3:20 in the afternoon and runs into the night. A summer evening at the beach amphitheater with that catalog is about as good as a Long Island Friday gets, and every chance to see Willie is a chance you take. Tickets start around 55 dollars, entry is mobile only, and clear bags are the rule.

The Hampton Classic ends with its $400,000 Grand Prix on Sunday

The Hampton Classic wraps its week in Bridgehampton on Sunday, August 30, and the last day is the one the whole show builds toward. The $70,000 two-star grand prix goes at 10:30 in the morning, and the $400,000 Longines Hampton Classic Grand Prix, the richest moment in East End sport, jumps off at 2 p.m. at 240 Snake Hollow Road. Grandstand seats on Grand Prix Sunday are reserved and sell in advance, but general admission to the grounds runs on a 25 dollar carload of parking, and the boutiques, food vendors and warm-up rings are a full day on their own. Gates open at 8 a.m. One more summer ends the way it always has, with the best riders in the world clearing fences in a Bridgehampton field.

Riverhead turns 30 years of trains into a festival

The Riverhead Railroad Festival runs Saturday and Sunday, August 29 and 30, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Railroad Museum of Long Island, 416 Griffing Avenue, and this year it marks three decades of the museum keeping Long Island's rail history alive at the Riverhead site. Admission is 15 dollars a day, and the draw is the collection itself: real equipment from the railroad that built this island, restored and explained by the volunteers who did the restoring. Bring a kid who likes trains and you will not get them home before closing.

Apple season starts Saturday on Sound Avenue

Harbes Orchard in Riverhead opens for the season on Saturday, August 29, which makes this the first weekend of the year a Long Islander can pick an apple off a tree. The orchard at 5698 Sound Avenue opens with apple picking and pumpkin picking, a corn maze on a Robin Hood theme this year, kids' activities, and live music from noon to 5 on weekends. It pairs naturally with the railroad festival ten minutes down the road: trains in the morning, orchard in the afternoon, and a Sound Avenue farm stand run home. Fall does not officially start for another three weeks. The North Fork is not waiting.

Freeport fills its rec center with fossils and gems

The Freeport Gem, Mineral and Jewelry Show sets up at the Freeport Recreation Center, 130 East Merrick Road, on Saturday from 10 to 5 and Sunday from 10 to 4:30. Around 27 dealers sell minerals, fossils, gemstones, estate jewelry and beads, everything on the tables produced by the earth itself, which has been the show's organizing idea for years. Admission is 6 dollars, kids 12 and under come in free with an adult, and mentioning the organizer's website at the door knocks a dollar off. It is the rare indoor event worth trading an August afternoon for, and a reliable place to lose an hour and 40 dollars without regretting either.

The original Audrey hosts Little Shop of Horrors in Patchogue

Patchogue Theatre screens Little Shop of Horrors on Sunday, August 30 at 7 p.m. for the film's 40th anniversary, and the host is the reason to go: Ellen Greene, who created Audrey on stage and played her in the 1986 Frank Oz film, appears in person at 71 East Main Street. A meet-and-greet package adds premium seating, a photo op and signed memorabilia. Forty years on, the movie holds up as one of the strangest and most beloved musicals ever put on film, and hearing its Audrey talk about it in a 1920s Main Street theater is the kind of Sunday night Patchogue keeps quietly delivering.

And one more before it goes

Saturday is also the final day of Amistad Week in Montauk, the commemoration of the schooner La Amistad's 1839 landing at Culloden Point. If the East End is your direction this weekend anyway, the closing events are worth the detour, and the story behind them is one every Long Islander should know.

Six ways in, from a Wantagh amphitheater to a Bridgehampton jumping ring, and not a bad choice among them. August only gives you so many of these weekends, and then it stops. Go use this one.