Sarah Day remembers the days of having to leave her house when it was still dark just to fight the crowd for a hay bale at the Colorado Springs Street Breakfast.

When she attended as a kid, clog dancers and country music by the Flying W Wranglers were annual attractions.

Though she was no longer singing along and into a hair brush, Day, her mother and 9-year-old son Matthew continue the street breakfast tradition.

The family was among an estimated 6,000 people in attendance Wednesday at the 51st annual event at Pikes Peak Avenue and Tejon Street. The event began at 5:30 a.m. to promote the 71st Pikes Peak of Bust Rodeo that kicks off on July 12 with a parade through downtown. The rodeo is July 13-16.

See a slide show of photos from the Street Breakfast.

Breakfast included a $5 helping of pancakes, eggs, juice, milk and coffee prepared by Fort Carson soldiers.

“It used to be you could order your eggs however you wanted and get meat on the side,” Day’s mother Shirley Day said  between bites of a pancake while local country band the Durango Drifters played.

With the sun peaking over the mountains, attendees in cowboy hats and business attire filed in, sitting on hay bales and nibbling on their food.

In the serving line, it was Sgt. Dirk Anderson’s first time working the breakfast. He admitted that setting up at 2 a.m. made for a long and cold night, but he wasn’t bothered by it.

“It’s nice to get out amongst the public,” Anderson said after slapping a large pancake onto a customer’s Styrofoam plate, encouraging him to come back for seconds.

To prepare for the masses  of hungry people, soldiers rounded up more than 1,100 pounds of pancake batter, 1,500 pounds of eggs and 80 gallons of syrup.

Spokesman Brett Axton said the Sertoma club that helped sponsor the event ran out of its stash of 5,000 meal tokens — proving a notable turnout.

“It’s the most people I’ve seen at 6:30 in the morning in 10 years,” Axton said, adding that years ago the event attracted as many as 10,000 people.

With Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” playing, 13-year-old Jalliyah Morgan reveled in the spirit of an era before her time.

“It feels like we’re in an old country western,” she said.

Larry Lightfoot, who had donned Western attire for the breakfast, experienced a similar sentiment.

“I always felt like I was born too late,” he said. “Everybody said I would’ve made a good mountain man.”

The highlight for Lightfoot was supporting five friends who are Range Riders as they took off toward Old Colorado City on their annual five-day horseback ride.

Among the 144 riders promoting the upcoming rodeo, Jim Williams prepared to take his 30th trip.

He wasn’t ashamed to admit that his first ride was a tough one.

“The first year was really an experience,” Williams said. “I had never really camped in the mountains before, so I grabbed my kid’s sleeping bags. I froze.”

Now that he is better prepared, he was looking forward to supporting a Western tradition and the camaraderie that comes along with it.

Joseph Adamson, 5, has a belly full of pancakes after eating at the annual street breakfast on Wednesday. He and his cousins, Jasiah Adamson, 6, and Tristan Adamson, 5, were up bright and early on Wednesday. The Pikes Peak Range Riders rode through downtown Colorado Springs to promote the upcoming Pikes Peak Rodeo in July. Photo by JERILEE BENNETT/The Gazette