My Life and Travels
Balloon pictures and videos.
Below are some of the videos I took during the Fiesta.
Glowing Balloons
Burning Propane
Balloons and Snoopy
Inflating and Competing, in the second half of this video the balloons into the field. They have to go out at least one mile from this launch field and fly back to drop bean bags into a boat or squares on the ground.
Balloons In The RV Park
Several Balloons In The Sky
Next year will be the Fiesta’s 50th year and they inflated a new balloon first time this morning.
Fiesta pictures
Pictures from Fiesta
Lots of people, these pictures where taken on Saturday morning Oct 9. This event is such a cool gathering of people.
We flew the balloon today. Bruce took Karen on a 10 mile 2 hour flight to the northwest just south of highway 550 in Bernalillo. Landing was through a small tree and into a berm right next to dirt road.
I got busy and only got this picture of the crew, we had a good time. Life is good when the landing is right next to a road and the trailer can be driven up next to the balloon basket.
Brian came to Fiesta for three days.
We played cards one evening, Five Crowns. Brian won all the games we played. Jean could not beat Brian even with Marley’s help.
The Fiesta promotes itself on Friday before the Fiesta by having balloons go to local schools and inflating. This year we went to a school in northern Rio Rancho which has never had a balloon in its’ 23 year history.
Our balloon is on the left.
You may notice a detour in our route to Albuquerque. We still need propane for the coach so we are going to stop at Amerigas again this morning, they are supposed to open at 8:00. We got there at 9:30 and this time I didn’t turn into the yard before I looked to see the yard gate closed again. We continued south looking for a place to get off the road and do some googling to find propane. Several miles down the road I saw an Amerigas bottle delivery truck pull into an Albertson’s parking lot. I followed him in and parked in the exit road, the little islands they put in some parking lots make it difficult for our 53 feet of coach and tow to maneuver around. The Amerigas driver was really nice and pointed us toward an Ace Hardware a half mile down the road where we got propane. He did call the Amerigas yard and confirm the yard person to fill bottles did not show for work again. To get the coach close enough to fill with propane I did have to unhook the pickup again.
This is the first place we set up camp. It has a great view over the RV Park towards the launch field. I did find out the one person in a white pickup trumps three people in two golf carts. After three of us had camp set up a guy in a white pickup came by and said we could not park where we were and HAD to move.
This is our second and final spot. On a level ridge with significant drop offs on both sides. We were level.
We made the correct decision to move south a day early. I talked to some folks who spent Monday night in Farmington and it rained hard all night. We are all set up and ready for almost two weeks of balloons.
Got a notice yesterday that the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta has been moved to 2021.
Updated Fiesta count down.
