The Myers Blog: So Much Hot Air!!!

This past weekend, mom, dad, Brent and I were lucky to be able to attend the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. I say lucky because the weather had been bad all week and Saturday was the first day since Monday that they were able to launch a mass ascension of several hundred balloons within a period of 30 to 45 minutes. We arrived at 5:30 in the morning and although there were a lot of people everywhere nothing was happening with the balloons. We happened to find ourselves standing beside one of the several balloons on the field that were licensed to fly at night. We were again, lucky enough, to witness them getting it assembled, setting up big fans to fill it with air and shape it before they fill it with hot air to launch. This one happened to the an Intel balloon. It and two others took off in the dark. One was a balloon with the American flag stars and stripes on it. Seeing them light up in the dark was pretty cool. They looked like big lightbulbs in the sky. Not long after the sun started coming up several balloon started to inflate around us. We were waiting to see if they were going to be able ascend that morning because of the wind and the mud. When they announced that the ok was given to ascend, there were suddenly balloons everywhere! We were surrounded by balloons of every shape and color. There were the normal balloons you always see but there were also tons of shapes and characters! Some were to big to ascend but stayed inflated most of the time. It was so hard to find a place to stand because balloons were going up all round us and there were so many people there. It was incredible to see all the balloons in the air with the mountains in the background. It was hard to decide what pictures to post on here. I took 220!! Its hard to capture the beauty. There comes a point when you just have to put the camera down and take it all in! It was such a fun morning and experience. Cold (41 degrees), but fun!!