America's Freedom Festival, hour by hour

A private non-profit foundation that runs more than two dozen patriotic events across the late spring and summer, four of them stacked into the Fourth of July itself: a hot air balloon launch around six in the morning, a run at seven, a Grand Parade at nine and a stadium concert with fireworks at eight in the evening. The modern multi-event festival took shape in the 1980s, and Provo has marked the Fourth since the 1870s, so it is a fixed part of the calendar rather than a one-year program.

It is the one part of the Fourth with a real ticket price attached. Prices are reset each year and sold by seat, running from the mid tens of dollars for the cheapest up into the low hundreds for the best. The eight in the evening show at LaVell Edwards Stadium is a national touring headliner with a military tribute, a flyover and a fireworks, drone and laser finale. Tickets go on sale months ahead and the show sells out, so it is a spring decision rather than a July one.

Curbside viewing is free, and reserved bleacher seats run a small fee, around ten dollars a seat. The Grand Parade steps off at nine in the morning and runs along University Avenue and Center Street through the historic downtown, with more than twenty floats and more than fifteen marching bands. Free does not mean easy: the good curbside spots are claimed the afternoon and evening before, and the route closes the middle of the city from early morning.

The Balloon Fest runs on three mornings, roughly July 2 through 4, with around two dozen hot air balloons launching from Fox Field at 1100 North Freedom Boulevard at about six in the morning. It is free, it is weather dependent as any balloon event is, and getting there early enough to watch the inflation is a materially better experience than arriving in time for the launch. Pilots run competitive games in the air rather than a simple mass ascent.

University Avenue and Center Street, which between them are the main north to south and east to west arteries through central Provo, close from early morning on the Fourth for a parade starting at nine. Anything that involves crossing the route between roughly eight and midday is a walk rather than a drive. Parking once, early, on the side of the route you intend to be on is the only strategy that works.

For a free curbside spot on a good stretch, before seven in the morning, and the best spots are claimed the afternoon and evening before. That timing also works with the rest of the morning: balloons at six at Fox Field, then a walk to a parade position by half past eight. If an early start is not on, reserved bleacher seats for a small fee, around ten dollars a seat, solve the problem outright and are worth it for anyone traveling in.

No, and this catches people. The festival's biggest event in the days before the Fourth, the Colonial Heritage Festival, runs roughly July 2 through 4 on the SCERA grounds in Orem rather than in Provo: a free living-history village with colonial trades and a full military encampment, Continental and British forces both. The drive between the two cities is a normal ten to fifteen minutes outside the parade window.

More than two dozen other events in all, spread thinly across the late spring and summer, from contests and exhibitions to ceremonies and concerts. Most of them are the sort of thing you go to because you live here rather than because you traveled. The festival keeps a full calendar on its own site, and that is the place to check the current year's dates and lineup.

It is a real week rather than a background one. Central Provo's two main arteries close for a morning, a stadium fills in the evening, an aircraft flyover passes over the city and fireworks are audible across the whole valley. Streets near the stadium and along University Avenue carry most of the load. People inside the parade corridor sort themselves quickly into those who plan the year around it and those who plan to be elsewhere.