Hot Air Balloon and Sidewalk Art Festivals!

My day today started out at 4:00 AM. We headed out in the dark to a nearby park and staked out  seats in the wet grass. This morning was the Sonoma Hot Air Balloon Classic. Starting at 5 the balloons started filling up. Throughout the morning (5-8 AM) 30 balloons, from all over the country, were filled and let off. It was incredible! Then in the afternoon we headed over to San Rafael for the Italian Street Art Festival. We walked around and looked at huge pieces of sidewalk paintings. The artists (from all over the world) had only been working for 5 or 6 hours and some of them had already finished. (The rest are set to finish by late tomorrow afternoon.) One spot was set aside for kids though that had 1 ft x 1 ft squares that kids (some were as young as 2) were allowed to purchase to use.

 We also stopped by to say hi to my cousin who was one of the artists! 

I'm planning on getting up early again tomorrow for the second launch of the balloons!

Throughout the day I took 468 photos!! I've included some of my favorites from both events.

Sonoma Hot Air Balloon Classic

-Dawn Patrol-

-The Giant Purple People Eater and the Energizer Bunny-

-"Sushi" the fish (one of my favorites)-

-The Energizer Bunny is the tallest balloon in the country!-

-The Giant Purple People Eater (another favorite of mine)-

The Italian Street Art Festival

-My cousin and her piece-

-These guys were creating a collage of a man out of hundreds of colored squares-

-This is one of the kids squares that I enjoyed-

-This was my favorite piece, the blending was incredible!-

-Some of the kids squares were really good-