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Happy times at the Heritage Festival

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Matt Powell had an interesting suggestion last year regarding one of Cedar Park's newest festivals.

He brought up the idea of moving the Heritage Festival to Heritage Oak Park.

“It just made sense to have it there,” the Place 1 council member said.

And it was done. The Second Annual Cedar Park Heritage Festival took place last Saturday at Heritage Oak Park with nearly 2,500 people showing up for live music, face paintings, turkey legs, ears of corn, musket shooting, mobile video games and a look at archived books and photos that helped shape Cedar Park into what it is today.

There were 48 arts and crafts vendors and 10 food vendors that offered chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, baked goods, pizza, roasted corn, funnel cakes, corn dogs, curly potatoes, lemonade, tea, sausage on a stick, sodas and water, snow cones, popcorn, turkey legs and cotton candy.

There was plenty for the kids, including a penny toss sponsored by Maximized Living Health Center, the bean bag toss run by the local AARP, a ring toss run by the Cedar Park Explorers, a Kiddie Striker game sponsored by Avalar Texas Real Estate, video game adventures sponsored by Games2U and a spinning wheel game sponsored by State Farm Insurance.

Overall, the city staff thinks the festival was a hit.

“We received positive feedback from the people that attended who said the festival was a lot of fun,” said Tara Timm, recreation program coordinator for the Cedar Park Parks and Recreation Department. “And people feel this location ended up working well.”

The first festival was held the last weekend in April at Elizabeth Milburn Park in 2007. That time frame would have conflicted with other area festivals and events and Milburn is a much larger park. The Parks Department wanted a more intimate setting with more trees for shade, so the festival was moved.

The band Duck Soup played the festival for the second consecutive year.

The hamburger cook-off was won by the Hill Country News, followed by Lee Reeves of the Cedar Park Parks Department; third place went to Rick Elmore, a former New Orleans native who moved to Cedar Park after his company relocated several personnel after Hurricane Katrina. Elmore's entry was called the chicken andouille gumbo burger.

E-mail editor@hillcountrynews.com

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