The shadiest sections of downtown Bangor were jam-packed on Thursday morning as a colorful array of veterans, student athletes, bagpipe players, remote-controlled robots, history buffs in period garb and others crossed over the Penobscot River from Brewer, then turned up Main Street.
They were participating in the area’s annual Fourth of July parade, a patriotic celebration that drew more than 1,000 people even though temperatures had already climbed into the mid-80s by late morning and were expected to hit 90 degrees.
“The heat is the only thing I don’t enjoy,” said 8-year-old Charlotte Abbott of Old Town.
The sun beamed down on the section of sidewalk where Charlotte stood with her mother, Nia, and 3-year-old sister, Alexis, all three wearing matching dresses patterned after the American flag.
“It’s about spending time with family and supporting our country,” said Nia, who forecast a swimming trip to Cold Stream Pond later in the day.
Sgt. Wade Betters of the Bangor Police Department, who was controlling traffic at the intersection of Union and Main street, said that “more than a thousand” people attended the parade.
The parade, which started in Brewer and lasted just over an hour, was part of a daylong set of festivities that also included a pancake breakfast and 3K road race in the morning, a charity concert later in the day and a fireworks show starting at 9:30 p.m.
Betters expected the fireworks, which were to be launched from a barge in the Penobscot River for the first time in over a decade, to draw an even greater crowd than the parade.
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While the heat was oppressive to some on Thursday morning, Betters said the parade crowd seemed prepared with adequate sun protection and fluids. Some young kids also splashed through a makeshift sprinkler connected to a fire hydrant on Broad Street.
The day’s heat also wasn’t close to the record high of 99 degrees that was reported in Bangor on July 4, 1949, according to Tim Duda, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Caribou.
Many parade-goers noted the heat, but were undaunted by it.
Daniel Kennedy of Bangor and his son, 10-year-old Tobias, hadn’t been to the parade before, but both donned tie-dye shirts and took in the festivity from another sunny section of Main Street.
“I just like the cars,” Tobias said. “They’re all really cool.”
Daniel praised the performance by a group of marching bagpipers and said their tune would probably be stuck in his head when they had a barbecue later in the day.
While her husband stayed home to watch golf, Susan Coolbrith of Bangor also made it to the parade with her 14-year-old granddaughter Madison.
They were thinking about swimming at Penobscot Valley Country Club later in the day, but Coolbrith wouldn’t miss the annual march down Main Street.
“I love parades,” she said. “Every year, there seems to be more in this one. It’s wonderful.”