It’s a highly-anticipated sign of spring: the opening of a popular ice cream stand in Latham.

Guptill’s Ice Cream opened for the season Saturday. This is their 30th year.

A crowd showed up. At times, it was difficult to find a spot in the 500-space parking lot.

“New this year is this sampler,” said Wes Guptill. “You can get six flavors of your choice, hard or soft, and they’re a little smaller, and they can sample flavors because we have so much demand for ‘can I sample this, sample that.’ Now they can take this home and experience six different flavors and mix hard and soft together which is very popular so far today.”

Also new this year, joining the existing 80 flavors are four new hard flavors: banana cream pie, cookie monster, cookie fudge deluxe, and mint cookie fudge.