Hot Air Balloons

This weekend there was a hot air balloon festival in Amarillo.  There were three scheduled balloon events, and I think that this was a little tiny dry run for some of the balloon pilots before the big festival in Albuquerque next month.

I dragged the family out of bed before dawn on Saturday morning to go see the balloon launch at dawn.  It was early and cold, but the sun finally came up.  It turned out to be too windy for the balloons, though.  Because Amarillo.

Man Cave Tailgate 

The wind calmed down, so I grabbed the family and made them come to the second balloon event at sunset that night.  We were in the park at both sunrise and sunset on Saturday, but it was totally worth it, because all the balloons were amazing.



We got there just as they were starting to fill up the balloons.

Do you see all those people?  I have never seen so many people in Amarillo at one time.  It was like every single person came out to the park that night.

So I think taking photos of hot air balloons might be one of my most favorite things.

We stayed until the sun went down and they started putting the balloons away for the night.  They were all scheduled to take off at dawn the next morning, but we decided to skip that because we had already seen all the balloons.  And it turned out to be too windy to get the balloons out again on Sunday morning, anyways.  Out of the three planned events, this was the only one that actually turned out.

I've been trying to talk Kevin into going to Albuquerque for the balloon festival for the past two years, but it hasn't worked out yet.  I think this may have satisfied my desire to see hot air balloons, and with only a tiny fraction of the trouble involved with getting to a field in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico along with thousands of other people just before dawn one cold morning in October.