Tips, Links for Weekend Oyster Festival

The takes over historic Oyster Bay Harbor Saturday and Sunday, where 200,000 people are expected to flock for food, games, entertainment and maritime exhibits.

The festival is the largest waterfront spectacle in the Northeast.

If you plan to attend, here's a few things to expect:

• Saturday's weather is expected to be cloudy with a chance of rain or thunderstorms, particularly toward evening and windy. Mid-day temperatures in the 60s. A jacket is recommended. Sunday's forecast looks better.
• Northbound traffic into Oyster Bay via Route 106 is notoriously arduous, particularly at mid-day. Local residents use words like "nightmare" and "Armageddon" to describe the congestion in the hamlet of Oyster Bay on festival weekends.
• There is extremely limited parking anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the festival site.
• Parking fields are set up at various locations leading into Oyster Bay. They include the Equestrian Center off Route 106 in Muttontown, the Vernon School lot in East Norwich and the Mill Max Mfg. parking garage and lot on Route 106 (Pine Hollow Road at that point) just past the CVS and McDonald's restaurant.
• From each satellite lot, free shuttle buses take visitors to and from the harbor. These lots are clearly marked.
• You can also park at the Syosset LIRR station; shuttle buses operate from there to and from the festival site, as well.
• You can even take the Oyster Bay branch of the LIRR right to the site from places along that route such as Glen Cove, Locust Valley and Garden City. The LIRR is running extra trains on that branch all this weekend.

Look for our other and external links about the festival itself.

Patch also has a special video feature on a centerpiece attraction of the festival, the fireboat John J. Harvey.