Balloon Rally

I love hot air balloons. Watching them, taking photos and I'd love to ride in one someday. So when I saw there was a rally coming up we made plans to go.

It was a couple hours away so we made and afternoon of it because after all the website listed quite a few other activities to do while the balloons weren't active. We arrived around 3pm so we had about 3 hours until the launch at 6pm. Unfortunately that was way too early. The "midway" concessions and games, Inflatable jump house and carnival games that were listed were non existent. The arts and crafts consisted of 3 table of people selling jewelry. And the car show had about 15-20 older cars, a few of which were leaving as we arrived. Needless to say we were a tad disappointed that the website seemed to make it out to be a bigger deal than it was. We walked the grounds and saw the sights in about 15 minutes.

So now what? We decided to take a ride around town and see what was around. We came across the downtown square area which looked kinda cool and quite familiar.

Does this remind anyone else of "Back to the Future"?

We spent some time down there walking around and checking out a few shops and them drove around a bit more and found a Pizza Hut to have dinner at and headed back to the grounds in time for the launch. By then the place was packed. Obviously the locals know when it's time to come by!

We found a spot in the bleachers and listened to the emcee ramble on about something until it was time for them to head out. They started with a lead balloon who inflated and took off. That one set out first found a good place to land, set out a target and the rest competed to get as close to that target as possible. The rest could not start until the first was clear of the ground. It was neat to see them all start inflating at once.

Here's a couple pics. I plan to put some more up on my photoblog soon too.

Once the launch started in was fun. We will definitely know for next time that we don't need to arrive so early. And possibly then we might be willing to stay for the balloon glow later in the evening. We decided to skip that this time because by this time the kids had had enough and were ready to head home.

As we were getting on the freeway to head home we noticed a bunch of the balloons still in the air. As we drove we were able to see the spot where some of them were starting to land.

It started out a big rough but it turned into a great afternoon/evening as a family!