BY DEB AND TIM SMITH
Looking for a new and family friendly way to spruce up your weekend and stay right here in Sentinel-Land? If you are, you should check out the 86th annual Camp Lima Blossom Festival on June 9! At this point we’re sure a lot of you are thinking, “I didn’t even know we had a Camp Lima, let alone a Blossom Festival.” In our never-ending quest to inform as well as entertain, here’s the scoop.
The Blossom Festival is held at 2375 Pond Road in Lima. In this day and age, folks can just GPS the address to get there, aided by the signs that will be posted along the road, but allow us to give you the general idea without having to put the paper down. If you head east out of Lima on Route 5 & 20 toward Bloomfield, a couple miles out of town you’ll turn right on Factory Hollow Road. A few more miles down the road you’ll arrive at the festival. Somewhere in the interim, Factory Hollow has become Pond Road, but there’s no turn involved.
The festival is sponsored by the Rochester Touristen Verein, which is a member of the Federation of German American Societies. This event reminds us of a few other holidays about which we have written, namely St. Patrick’s Day and Dyngus Day. Just like everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day and everybody’s Polish on Dyngus Day, on Blossom Festival Day, everybody’s German. It’s a festival with an ethnic theme and you’re all invited!
The festival features fun, food, music & dancing, and the beer and wine will begin to flow at noon. The chemistry sounds just about right to us. The gates open at 11am and the good times will roll until 7pm. Admission is just $5 for adults and all the kids under 17 get in for free! Sounds like a pretty good bang for your family buck, with a kids area providing games, face painting, and a piñata contest.
The headlining musical act this year is The Krazy Firemen out of Spencerport along with the Alphorn Society of Western NY. Erik Schwartz will be playing the accordion indoors and traditional German songs will be sung by the Germania Singers and Dance showcased, by the Rochester Schwaben Verein Folk Dancers.
If you’ve got a bit of a gear-head thing going, they’ve got you covered. The Finger Lakes Region Volkswagen Club and the Niagara Region Porsche Club of America will be on hand to display beautiful new and vintage German automobiles.
We had never heard of this event until a month ago and we found the details to be intriguing. We will be there with our beer steins in hand and a face full of strudel. Maybe we’ll see you there.
