BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Despite periods of heavy rain and lightning, festivalgoers continued to show up at the Historic Burnside Plantation on Saturday for the opening day of the 39th annual Blueberry Festival.<\/p>\n
Hosted by Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites, the annual festival offered everything from live music and handmade cider to blueberry treats, local vendors, hands-on history activities and more.<\/p>\n
Storms briefly forced organizers to pause the event because of lightning, but the festival resumed once the weather cleared.<\/p>\n
“It rains half the time, but that’s half the fun. It was like thundering and lightning before we all had to huddle into the historic buildings for a moment. We’re back out here,” said festivalgoer Amy Grub.<\/p>\n
Beth Beatty, special events manager for Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites, said organizers were prepared to welcome visitors back once conditions improved.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got lots of hands-on history activities, tons of vendors returning favorites, plus a lot of new faces, tons of fun in the Blueberry Tavern. And we hope everybody comes out and enjoys all our blueberry sweet treats,” Beatty said.<\/p>\n
To accommodate guests affected by the weather, organizers allowed Saturday ticket holders to use their admission on Sunday instead if they preferred.<\/p>\n
Beyond the blueberry-inspired food and drinks, visitors also learned about traditional cider-making through historical demonstrations and had the opportunity to sample fresh cider.<\/p>\n
Vendors said the rain did little to keep people away, with many visitors returning after the storms passed to continue enjoying the festival.<\/p>\n
The Blueberry Festival continues Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Historic Burnside Plantation in Bethlehem. Tickets are still available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Despite periods of heavy rain and lightning, festivalgoers continued to show up at the Historic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-246952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}