Make wishtv.com your home page

4th of July weekend events and celebrations, CarmelFest due to draw thousands

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Hoosiers will be celebrating 4th of July with a comeback of traditional festivities, and in Carmel, thousands are getting ready for the CarmelFest.

“This is probably going to be the biggest and best CarmelFest ever,” the event chairman, Steven Krusie, said.

Event organizers say the event has gotten so big that they’re now expanding it. There will be all kinds of festivities outside Carmel City Hall and Carter Green. There will be live entertainment, food, a marketplace, and dozens of vendors.

“We’ve created a larger kid zone so that parents and kids can have a great time with a petting zoo, with a bird aviary, and a bunch of fun rides,” Krusie said.

“What I’ve seen over the years is it grows from just a very small little gathering on an afternoon, on a fourth of July, to now a two-day event,” the fireworks chairman, Jeff Worrell, said.

There will also be fireworks on Sunday and Monday at 9:45 p.m. at three different locations like the Badger Field and West Park. On top of that, there will be a big parade on Monday morning that goes by Rangeline Road.

“You will see in the last five to six years, it’s really gone really, really crazy as in a good way, and then the biggest thing is we have the Carmel parade. The Carmel parade is just unbelievable,” Tony Cardenas, a Carmel resident, said.

According to event organizers, there will also be hundreds of volunteers to help guide people, and a lot of parking spaces.

“Part of what is driving, I’ll call this ‘return to normalcy’, is just that I think everybody has really missed being together in community and with their family and friends,” Krusie said.

In Indianapolis, the 4th of July fireworks is slated to be a 20 minute show launched from a site next to the Regions Tower. Meanwhile, Fishers will have three fireworks shows on July 4th, which is also slated to start at around 10 p.m.