page_title: Ypsilanti Heritage Festival
section_title: Activities
hierarchical_section_title: Ypsilanti Heritage Festival / Activities
caption_attribution_description: English: Teams from Greenfield Village playing a game of vintage base ball at Frog Island Park, during the 2011 Ypsilanti Heritage Festival.
context_page_description: YpsiFest is a festival in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Held each year on the 4th weekend of August, the festival sprawls across Frog Island Park, Riverside Park, and historic Depot Town. The festival features a variety of activities and entertainment including helicopter rides, acrobats and theater performances by Ring of Steel, evening concerts, gambling and bingo, and a huge kids zone full of children specific activities and rides. Additionally there are featured evens like Illumination@YpsiFest where local business compete for prizes by creating illuminated sculptures for an evening display, and an illumination parade.
context_section_description: The Ypsilanti Heritage Festival includes and has included a wide variety of activities and events.
  The Ypsilanti Historic Home Tour, held annually during the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival, began, like the festival proper, in 1979. A beer garden and gambling tent anchored the center of the festival from 1979 through 2010. In 2011 the gambling was eliminated for financial reasons, while the beer garden continued with an expanded food and drink selection; however, in January, 2012, new festival director Andrew Clock announced that "the casino will be back, set up right next to the beer tent, where it belongs." A bed race through downtown Ypsilanti was added as an annual event beginning in 2009.
  The Ypsilanti Heritage Festival Parade began in 1979, and has been held every year. In 2007, the parade attracted wider attention when parade organizers approved the inclusion of a group protesting a proposed city income tax and subsequently revoked the permission. Festival coordinators explained that their rule was to exclude groups marching to represent controversial or political issues, and that the initial approval was an error.
  Because the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival has often been the same weekend as the Woodward Dream Cruise, festival coordinators "decided it would be a blast to have something that was the direct opposite of the Dream Cruise", and the Nightmare Cruise, a spoof of the Woodward Dream Cruise, was born in 2005. The only rules are that "[t]he car has to be legally driveable, and fluid leaks should be at a minimum."
  Other events have included a pole vault competition sanctioned by USA Track & Field, live theater, antique cars and fire engines, vintage base ball sponsored by Greenfield Village, "Precious Pets" and "Beautiful Babies" contests, a rubber duck race, a living history encampment, a high wire performance by one of The Flying Wallendas, and a circus.
caption: Teams from Greenfield Village play a game of vintage base ball at the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival each year (2011 game pictured).
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