Throbbing rock music was not what I expected to hear as we ventured to the park in the center of town.

Apparently the organizers decided to employ a metal band to entertain the crowd. I questioned their judgment until I walked into the band’s tent and saw a woman in her 60s bobbing her head and tapping her boot.

The band tent offered a nice reprieve from the soggy snowfall. One of the people in our traveling party made the mistake of wearing sneakers and is paying the price. I think the town has an even greater number of slush puddles than ’hogs at this point.

We checked out the 7-foot-tall groundhog ice sculpture before escaping the noise of the park.

We also had the good fortune of running into North East native Chuck Allessie. He was manning the Lions Club Information Booth – a trailer parked in the McDonald’s parking lot off of the main drag.

“I met a girl and moved down here 51 years ago,” he said. Now he has seven kids, three grandkids, and enough information on groundhogs to fill an encyclopedia.