Balloon Fiesta, Day 2 (10-10-13)

Day Two- the storm is gone and the wind has left with it.  Once again we are up before dawn, headed over to the launch area.  



This time, the green flag is waving, indicating that all systems are “Go” for launch.







 

We arrived in time to watch the “Dawn Patrol” balloons being inflated.

 
As the sky started to get light, the balloons headed for the sky.

Soon, the sun peaked over the mountain top, and the crowd got quiet as the National Anthem was sung while two balloons carrying our flag climbed above the field.

This was the magical day for me.  As we wandered among the hundreds of balloons, everywhere we turned, more balloons were being released. 

Soon, the skies were strewn with hundreds of them.

    

This was the day for the “special Shape” balloons to fly. Some of them were cool to see because they are familiar.

Others were just colorful and fun to watch.  Not all of them were special shapes- there were plenty of “regular” balloons as well.





















Rather than posting each picture here, and making everyone scroll down for 10 minutes just to see them all, here’s a photo album with some of my favorites!

View Full Album

Once most of the balloons were in the air, we realized that they were flying directly over our trailers, so we went back to watch the show from the comfort of our chairs.

Well, if we thought watching them go up was fun- watching them come down was an absolute blast!










Part of the reason why ballooning is big in Albuquerque is because of a phenomenon called “the box”.  Quite often, the wind at low altitudes blows in one direction, and the wind at higher altitudes blows in the opposite direction, so the balloons fly out, go up in altitude and then fly back to the launch pad. 



Well, on this particular day, the box wasn’t working. 

There was virtually no wind, and we soon noticed that the balloons were landing in the parking lot right behind our trailers! They couldn't make it back to the launch field because of the lack of wind.

It didn’t take Mike and Paul long to realize that the pilots could use some help on the ground (sometimes the chase crew couldn't get to the landing site in time).

 













The guys got into a great rhythm. Once a balloon got close to the ground, the pilot would let the people on the ground know where they would like the basket to land, so that the balloon would have enough space to “fall”.













 

I lost track of how many balloons the guys helped bring down (Julie and I helped too, just not quite as much as the guys), but at one point, they hopped the fence to the baseball diamond to help the pilots who had chosen that spot to come down.

I am sure they were both tired by the end of the day but we had an awesome time.