Balloon Fiesta

If you have never been to Albuquerque in October for Balloon Fiesta I totally recommend it! Since moving here there has been so much going on and I have to tell you, I love love love this town!!!

On the 3rd Rob, Cait, Dyl and myself headed up the mountain before dawn in hopes to catch the mass ascension of the balloons for the first day. We got up there and holy crap it was freaking freezing - OK, worse than freezing because our mirror thermometer read "ICE"!!!



And that pic was taken after the sun CAME UP!!! It was much colder before that and to top it all off the winds were flipping crazy up there that morning!!!

This next pic was taken as the sun was coming up - it is looking out towards Moriarity and Santa Rosa from on top of Sandia Peak (which is about 11k elevation).



Isn't that just boo-ti-ful!!!

The next two pics are still from the top of Sandia Peak zoomed down onto the field where they were laying out and starting to fill up the balloons. Where I have "Balloon Field" written is right on top of the area - if you look a little to the right you can see some of the balloons starting to air up. Then check out the red brake lights of people heading to the field for opening morning!!! In the second pic you can see a few balloons starting to lift up already.






With my camera zoomed all the way in I wasn't gonna get the pics I wanted so we decided to head down the mountain to the foothills and see how the views were from there. If you look to the right of the first picture you will see an adobe looking building - that building is the Sandia Resort and Casino (it is much much bigger than it looks in this pic...lol). If you look directly left of the Casino you can kind of tell there is a gas station there (it may just be that I know it is there...LOL) and that is where we moved to after a few pics from this view.







So these next pics were taken from that gas station I mentioned. The first is of the Creamland Dairies Cow Balloon - how cah-yute is she?? I just love this balloon!!



Here we have Smokey the Bear but he wouldn't turn around so all I got was the back of his head (wait til later pics from this morning, he turned around for me).



Check out this witch - she is adorable!



This is a jack-in-the-box - he is just huge!!!



Then there was this purty little ladybug sitting on a sunflower - took numerous attempts to get a good shot of her as she was moving pretty fast when she got into good picture range.



And the last two from that morning's outing are landings - the first one hadn't been on the ground very long when we drove up on it and the second one you can see the hot air being let out of the top of it as the are deflating the balloon.





Well, that is all for tonite!! I will be back tomorrow with pics from the outing Rob and I took by ourselves this morning. We headed straight for the gas station we were at last weekend because of the great views and got some great shots including a short video AND....................well, I'll let the and be a special surprise tomorrow!!!

Thanks for stoppin' by and happy scrappin' - pop in tomorrow for more balloon fiesta pics and a sneak peek at something new I tried today!!!