Blog

Marathon, TX – Tuesday October 22, 2019

Still on our way toward Big Bend National Park, 356 miles today. Up early tomorrow with a goal of getting a site in the park. We still have 89 miles to the campground. Filled up with water this evening and we will dump holding tanks when we get to the park.

I did learn from our trip to Death Valley last spring, reset the satellite TV’s location location this evening so we will have the three major networks while at Big Bend ( don’t think we will have cell service).

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, Nm – Sunday October 13, 2019

One of the other people in our Fiesta group also got to fly on Wednesday and they took this picture of the launch field.

I am in this picture, do you see me.

I’m in the basket under the Balloon with the arrow pointing at it. I guess I am a little hard to see.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, NM – Friday October 11, 2019

Today’s picture was taken by Don Clapp, he has more amazing photos over on his Facebook page..

This morning was a good example of the difficulties of getting a balloon off the ground. The envelope was standing, John was in the basket with Bruce, when a gust of air came through the north end of the field on a diagonal line. This gust was maybe 100 wide and took out 5 or 6 balloons including ours.

One balloon was blown off the ground while still tethered to his pickup. Another dozen balloons who had their envelopes laying out on the ground put them back in the bag and called it a day.

One of the 1 inch round plastic supports which hold up the burner while the balloon is on the ground was broken off. Bruce had to go to Cameron balloon tent to have the end stuck that was in the basket drilled out and bought a new support. While he was there a special shapes balloon came in for a new set of four supports. All four of his got broken off.

Several hundred balloons went up today. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we had been five minutes ahead of today’s time table we would have flown.