Finally, there's a break in the weather and we make it to the balloon festival. We leave the house at 5:40am. Yes, everyone goes that early. Because it was Monday, parking and entry to the park went real fast. I guess it's pretty nuts on the weekend. Once we were in the park, the first thing we did was get coffee, hot chocolate and breakfast burritos. It was so cold (45 degrees) and so windy. There was even some concern as to weather they were going to let the balloons go up. After breakfast we shopped some of the vendors for a blanket and gloves. There were tons of vendor tents set up selling everything from food, clothes and of course tons of balloon items.

Finally about 7:30 the balloons were allowed to launch. At this time it was also much warmer and the wind had died down. I'm only going to post about 10-15 pictures, but I bet I took about 50. It was just amazing. The first balloon to go up carried the US flag while they played the national anthem.