Timber & Balloon Festival

On Saturday, we went to a ski resort not too far from us. They were having a "Timber & Balloon Festival". We had a good time, in spite of it being too windy for them to actually launch the hot air balloons, but more on that later.

One of the main attractions was a lumberjack show. They had 4 lumberjacks who used all sorts of different saws (including a souped-up chainsaw) to cut up all different sizes of logs. They had a race to the top of a tree, an ax-throwing competition, and a carving contest. It was fun to watch, and we were far enough away that the girls weren't too scared of the noise!!


They had an old hot-air balloon blown up so that you could see the size of the balloons and touch and feel the material. You could also go into the balloon. It was really cool to see up-close.

We got to see a sky-diving exhibition, and it was pretty impressive how fast they came down, and yet how accurate they were...all 4 landed within 50 feet of the flag they were aiming for. The man with the rainbow parachute here in this picture is the world record holder for total number of dives, so every dive he makes, he sets a new world record.

The girls had fun going on a pony ride and riding on this barrel train, as well as playing on the HUGE playpark at the ski resort.

(On a side note, the girls got to pick what color barrel they were in, and guess what? Gracie picked yellow, and Chloe picked... pink, of course!!)

And here is the disappointment... They were supposed to do a hot air balloon launch at the end of the day, but it was too windy. They postponed it, hoping the wind would die down or change directions (so we waited another 30 minutes, hoping to see the balloons get set up and launch), but it was still too windy. We still had a great time, but were really sad to not get to see the hot air balloons get ready and take off from so close.

As we were leaving, we saw this beautiful man-made waterfall in amongst some amazing fall foliage.

On the way home, we stopped by a restaurant that gives out free cookies with the kid's meal. So, the girls were eating them on the way home, and at one point we looked back and Gracie was falling asleep while she was in the midst of licking the frosting off of the cookie. So cute!!