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This year’s Goodyear Lake Festival will be held on Saturday from 10 a.m.
Festivities will last until dark at Krol Field on Lakeshore Drive South in the town of Milford. The event is co-sponsored by the Goodyear Lake Association and the Goodyear Polar Bear Jump.
The Festival celebrates the area’s natural resources: the lake, the land and the community spirit. There will be games and activities for children and adults throughout the day, including art and environmental activities by the Oneonta World of Learning – a museum without walls. The Milford Library will be sponsoring Mr. Beau the Clown as the closing event of its summer reading program.
There will be exhibits and demonstrations featuring the Milford Fire Department and Emergency Squad, the Otsego County Sheriff’s Department, Otsego County Cooperative Extension, Otsego County Conservation Association, Otsego County Soil and Water, and Allied Biological.
An oral history roundtable will feature residents who spent summers at the lake in past decades including Susan Plantz, Art Torrey, Wayne Wright and Marc Bresee. The audience will be invited to share reminiscences and photos of the lake as well.
The Blue Ribbon Cloggers will perform, along with the band, Country Express. Food, beverages and ice cream will be available throughout the day as well as crafts and collectibles. At 3:30 p.m., the famous Polar Bear Jump Chicken Barbeque will begin.
This year, there will be a special raffle for seaplane rides over the lake. In addition, The Polar Bear Jump will sponsor a 3-mile Goodyear Run. Contact Melissa at 607-286-9879 for information about the run.
Evening will bring a lighted boat parade around the lake and the day will end with gala fireworks by Majestic sparkling over the lake.
The Goodyear Association is celebrating 79 years of caring for the lake and the land and fostering a sense of community. In recent years, the group has been actively involved in protecting the quality of the water by working to remove invasive species from the lake.
The Goodyear Lake Polar Bear Jump has been raising funds to assist deserving more than $65,000. The festival will serve as a Polar Bear reunion day.
Organizers will be collecting non-perishable foods, cleaning and personal care products in non-breakable containers for the Otsego Hunger Project and regional food pantries.
The Goodyear Lake Festival is free and open to the public.
A full schedule of the day’s events, map and additional information may be found at www.goodyearlake.org.
