Staying four nights at the Fiesta RV Campground meant that we got to go to four mornings of launches. Check-out time wasn't until 11:00, so we were up early and dressed in our winter layers for our last morning of balloons.
They start launching around 7:00 a.m., before the sun has risen over the Sandia Mountains. But when the sun popped over the mountains, it lit up the skies filled with balloons. After two days of cloudy launches, it was a wonderful day to be in Albuquerque! By our fourth day, we are recognizing some of our balloons that already feel like friends to us. After watching yesterday's crash landing, we were glad to see the big dog balloon in the air again today.
Of course we had to search out Tom's balloon. It's the one with the yellow stripe going all the way around the middle. This is the balloon that we helped to pack up yesterday, and we were secretly hoping to see it land close by today. But they were soaring high above us this morning, going for a long ride.
It was such a beautiful morning that new balloons were launching. We had never seen this "one-eyed-one-horn-flying-purple-people-eater" before, but it instantly became Mark's favorite.
The huge cow sponsored by Creamland had inflated on other mornings, but it is too large to launch except in perfect conditions. We heard that too much wind could cause an udder catastrophe for this balloon. So today it soared right over head, and we got the picture of the cow jumping over the sliver of the moon before it floated down on the other side of the balloon museum.
Another of our favorites floated by--the piranha with its fork and knife and bib ready for another meal. It had just finished a human meal, as evidenced by the finger sticking out of its mouth.
Denisa was still looking up at the balloons when Mark took off running. He saw the Yoda balloon coming in for a rough landing, and he was the first person there to catch him.
More people came to the rescue, and they stabilized this big boy on the grass. You can see the Belgium flag flying from the line coming off the balloon. Yoda had obviously came from a long way to be at Albuquerque this week.
Once everything was stabilized, Mark helped with the process of helping the wicker basket tip over as Yoda kissed the ground.
We didn't know that it was balloon protocol to give out cards to the volunteers that help with landings, so Mark has a second card to add to his collection.After a good conversation with the pilot and the other volunteers, it was time to walk back towards the motor home. We're a little sad to leave the balloon fiesta--certainly one of the highlights of our first year on the road. But we have more adventures waiting. The sky was filled with balloons, and these two followed us back to our home to give us a send-off.
We pulled out of Albuquerque at 11:00, and made the 3.5 hour trip to Ute Lake State Park near Logan, Utah. We stayed here on our way home to Oklahoma in May. After a summer of good rains, the lake is up and looking good. That moisture also produced a record number of stickers and mosquitoes, so we wouldn't recommend a stop here in the fall. After scraping hundreds of stickers out of our shoes and laces, we did enjoy a tasty hot dog cookout. Of course, our favorite part of the campfire meal were the smores that we cooked afterward.
Another 3.5 hours on the road brought us back to our landing spot near Beaver, Oklahoma, where our parents live. We will be storing the motor home here for a month, while we continue our adventures in another form of travel. We'll be flying to South Korea and Japan, and hope to blog about more adventures in Asia soon!
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