If there was a commonly agreed upon strategy for enjoying Saturday's Hog Day festivities, it was to drink lots of water and pray for cloud cover.

With warnings in recent days that temperatures Saturday could reach triple digits, many attendees arrived early in the hopes of avoiding the worst.

"Everybody's got icewater," said Jeff Brown, a Hillsborough resident who brought his 4-year-old son and 6-month-old daughter. The family planned to stay from 10 a.m. to noon, and by 11 a.m. Jeff Brown felt fortunate that conditions weren't more oppressive.

"If the sun breaks through it's going to be miserable," he said.

"Miserable" may have described the weather, but few would have found the word fitting for the 27th annual Hog Day, Hillsborough's two-day celebration of barbecue and family fun.

This year's event was particularly impressive considering Hog Day's humble beginnings.

"It started out as a few guys cooking pigs along with a few hundred people," said Albert Shambley, 67, a retired Hillsborough resident who worked as a volunteer in the festival's early years and attended Saturday with several of his grandchildren.

Compare that with this year's Hog Day, which included a 29-team barbecue contest, amusement rides, live music, and vendors hawking everything from satellite television to Saturn cars.

To the delight of everyone who ventured out Saturday, the sun remained largely hidden behind clouds.

The temperature topped out at 96 at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

The extreme humidity was still enough to make people cluster in the shade to the right of the music stage. Others fanned themselves using any item that could create a breeze.

Among those feeling the heat most were the people working the grills and fryers in the food booths.

"I'm not scared of going to hell anymore because I'm in hell," said Abdel Karim, who spent the morning cooking sausages and meat for cheese steaks. "It's too hot."

Over near the rides, Donnie DePasquale, an artist, came prepared and had five fans going inside his face-painting booth.

"It's to attract everybody to come in," said DePasquale, who lives in Denver, N.C., but travels throughout the Southeast painting faces at various festivals.

Katy Norman of Raleigh attended Saturday's event with her 9-year-old daughter. She said she would have liked the festival to have more misting stations, cooling tents or sprinklers for young children to cool off in. The festival had one tent with fans next to a Red Cross ambulance, but it was out of the way and scarcely used.

The $5 fee people had to pay to enter the festival also disappointed some.

"I was surprised that I had to pay $5 to get in," said Paul Monk, 82, of Chapel Hill, who attended Hog Day for the first time Saturday.

"Almost all the street carnivals that I've been to have been free," Monk said.

This is the third year that Hog Day organizers have charged an entrance fee for the Saturday session. Margaret Wood Cannell, executive director of the Hillsborough/Orange County Chamber of Commerce, said it's necessary to offset the cost of putting on the event.

Hog Day has drawn as many as 35,000 people in past years. Cannell said she expected this year's attendance figures to be 12,000 to 14,000.

"Today it's been slow and steady," Cannell said midway through Saturday's session. "Considering that it's hot and a little overcast, it's been a good crowd."

As for the heat, several attendees said complaining about being hot and sticky at a hog festival made a certain sense. Shambley said there's also the time of year and fact that we're in the South.

"If you're going to live in North Carolina, you've got to go with it," he said.

david.bracken@newsobserver..com or 919-829-4548