Balloons

The neighboring town hosted a hot air balloon festival this weekend. We drove over late this afternoon to watch the balloons launch. We didn't actually pay admission and go to the festival. We hadn't planned to, but even if we had, the traffic was so bad we wouldn't have made it in time anyway. As it was, we made it to the place we intended just as the first balloon took off.

Although it was a cloudy and gray day, the balloons made a colorful scene on the horizon. This is another one of those times I was thankful for a zoom lens! There were some "normal", colorful balloons and some special balloons like a strawberry, football, soccer ball, and rocket. There was also a darth vader balloon, but it never made it off the ground. Unfortunately we only got to see the back of his head. The kids really enjoyed watching the balloons take off. After the balloons took off, a plane dropped 3 skydivers. The kids enjoyed that, too.

After we watched the launch, we went to dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant to pass the time until the balloon glow. The food was good, and the tortilla chips were huge!

After dinner we went back to the same spot to watch the balloon glow, but it never happened. There were storm clouds in the distance, so we assume it was cancelled due to the weather. The kids were disappointed, but we had a fun evening anyway.


(Yes, we stood on the tracks to watch the balloons....along with lots of other people. No trains came.)