About 500 people turned out for free doughnuts and ice cream Monday at Terminal Station. The Cherry Blossom Festival event was scheduled to be held in Third Street Park, but was moved to the station because of the threatening overcast sky.

The venue provided much better acoustics for members of Mount de Sales Academy’s choir, who filled the air with music as the masses filled their bellies with Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ice cream.

“I come here every year,” Phyliss Brisby said as she polished off her ice cream cone. “It seems like the ice cream taste better here this time of year.”

Breakfast wasn’t a meal of choice for some sugar seekers. Brisby only had an orange in the morning. “I was trying to save up for this,” she said.

“My mother made me eat a bagel,” Jillian Moore said as she munched on a doughnut. Before hitting up the free ice cream and doughnuts at Terminal Station, she devoured a couple of cupcakes that were being given away at Amanda’s Cakery on Cotton Avenue. “I’ve had ice cream, doughnuts and cupcakes and it’s not even 12:30,” she said.

The clouds may have chased the event out of the park, but it certainly didn’t chase away any hungry stomachs.

“We had to make a quick decision this morning,” said Jake Ferro, festival president and CEO. “We looked at the skies and said let’s not take any chances.”

Even with the last-second change, Ferro said the event turned out exceptionally well.

To contact writer Harold Goodridge, call 744-4382.