Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta 2010

...as it is loosely called around here...  Wow, are we lucky to live in such a cool place.  About 4 hours after we got home from the MUSE concert, we woke up the troops to go to our first mass ascension at the balloon fiesta park.  Words and pictures just don't do any good.  But I'll give it my best.  This was just utterly amazing.  What you can't capture on a camera is the 3-D effect of seeing the massive volume of these balloons as they inflate and take off.

We got there in the dark, so we were able to see the sunrise and be there when the first balloons filled up and took off and we stayed a few hours - as long as our sleep-deprived children could last.  Grace was really pushing for us to stay to see Darth Vader take off, but some of the bigger balloons took hours to get off the ground and we had no idea how much longer we would have to wait for him.  We made do with seeing him get inflated.

Actually, I should mention that a teacher at Grace's school is a balloonist.  She graciously shared her balloon with the school for Albuquerque Aloft morning (city-wide school celebration the day before Balloon Fiesta kicks off.)  This was really neat because we got to see them put a balloon together start-to-finish and blow it up and launch it.

Grace and her friend Neleah

Since we live on the west mesa with a great view directly to the balloon park, we got to enjoy the balloons each morning from our upstairs windows.  We literally woke up to hundreds of balloons in the sky every morning.  What a fantastic way to wake up!

I decided that one of the most fun things to do during balloon fiesta week is to do errands in the morning about the same time that the balloons are coming down.  They have some control over where they land, but sometimes not a lot.  They land ALL over the place.  Each balloon has a crew of people on the ground waiting for it to come down and then they drive a chase truck to pick it up.  It is fun to be out and about when the chase cars are driving all over and the balloons are coming down in parks, in the middle of major roads, out in the open desert, etc.  Balloon fiesta week would be a great time to commit a crime (not that I'm considering anything) because the police are completely consumed with traffic flow to the park and escorting the chase cars as they retrieve their balloons from crazy places.

One morning, I was sitting at the computer and heard a WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH sound outside.  Honestly, at first, I had a brief thought that it sounded like a hot air balloon, but quickly dismissed it.  Then, it kept going and I decided it sounded like someone dragging something across a driveway.  Then, my senses popped and I realized that it was "landing time" and there was probably a balloon right outside!  I ran out the front door to see a balloon hovering just inches above the houses on our street.  It landed about 3 houses away right at our school bus stop.  SO COOL!  Its chase car was there immediately and I couldn't believe how fast they got it packed up and drove off.

Another fun thing to do at balloon fiesta (apparently) is to go to a "glow" at night.  They don't launch the balloons, but they tether and inflate them and fire them up so that they glow and you can walk around and look at all of them.  We tried to go to the special shapes glow, but it ended up being canceled for wind (so did the one the next night.)  They still ran the "afterglow" fireworks which were pretty nice, but we will definitely have to make it to a glow next year.

Here's a very small sample of the pics we took:

Christmas card?

the "newest" New Mexicans... welcome to your new home Grandpa and Grandma!