Bangor fair-goers brave high heat on final weekend 10-day event seen as well-attended

BANGOR – Steamy temperatures didn’t prevent fair-goers from taking in the final weekend of the 152nd Bangor State Fair.

With the mercury uncharacteristically rising into the 90s on several occasions during the fair’s 10-day run, organizers expected attendance to be down about 800 people from last year’s 66,240, according to Bass Park director Mike Dyer, basing the estimate on ticket sales at the gate for the first nine days.

“All in all, it’s been a good run, and we’re very pleased,” Dyer said during a walk around the fairgrounds Sunday afternoon while flushed families meandered from Ferris wheel to dunk tank to one of this year’s most popular attractions, the lemonade stand.

The attendance record of 72,000 was set in 1998, with the second-highest total of about 69,000 coming in 1987.

Despite this year’s heat, the Oppewall family of Southwest Harbor continued a tradition and made their annual trip to the fair.

Seven-year-old Emma Oppewall, after asking her mother, bopped from the crocodile roller coaster to the AeroMax, an airplane that takes riders in circles.

Emma’s dad decided to sit that ride out.

“Centrifugal force and I don’t get along very well,” explained Wendell Oppewall as his wife, Liz, and the couple’s youngest daughter took a spin.

While Emma said she preferred “any ride with water” as a way to beat the heat, hundreds opted to take in the Mad Science Show in the not-coincidentally air-conditioned Bangor Civic Center.

“We sat in the front row the second time we saw it because of that huge fan,” said Lee Bickerstaff of Bangor, pointing to a gigantic fan used to simulate wind as part of the weather-related attraction.

Sarah Bishop, 73/4, who attended the fair with Bickerstaff and her father, Karl Bishop, finally decided the Mad Science Show was her favorite fair attraction.

But it wasn’t easy.

“It’s hard to say,” she said Sunday, the fair’s last day. “There’s a lot of stuff.”