Mama's Happy Place

We are finally here with a recap of Mama and Daddy's trip to the 

ABQ International Balloon Fiesta. Mama took A LOT of pictures and EVEN MORE

video of this event!

Since we are both very underwhelmed and uninterested with these scary

noisy monsters, we are handing the post over to Mama...

Thanks girls, and I appreciate you loaning me the blog to share my favorite Albuquerque annual event 

with everybody! 

As some of you know, since we moved to ABQ,  I have been in awe of the hot air balloon activity. Every October over 500 Hot Air Balloons from around the world descend on ABQ for the annual  International Balloon Fiesta. This year, Ed and I decided to park CeCe in the RV lot for the opening weekend of this event. We parked in the South RV lot from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, and it ended up being one of our most memorable camping trips of the season!

We had perfect weather for our weekend at the event.  We attended 3 sessions, 2 evening and one morning session. We also were treated to one "bonus" morning session.

 

Sunday was a full day starting with a 3:30 am alarm to get us to the launch field by 4:30am. We spent some time listening to the balloon pilot briefing, and watching the Dawn Patrol take off.

Pictures just don't do the Patrol justice, especially in the early morning light. 

Here is a short video of the Dawn Patrol lifting off.

You can also watch it HERE on our You Tube Channel

 

 

 If there is one thing worth getting up at 3:30am, it is definitely watching the Dawn Patrol as they float into the darkness!

 

I don't see the big deal....what about you Sunny??

Nope...in my opinion, the only thing worth getting up at 3:30 in the morning is a tasty bunny!!

 

 After the Dawn Patrol took off, there was enough time to grab a cup of coffee and some breakfast before the "Mass Ascension".  If you have never seen over 500 balloons taking off in waves,  I recommend you get to ABQ next year to watch!

To give you a little taste of the ascension action, here is another short video. 

Again, you can visit our YouTube channel and watch the video HERE

 

After the morning session, we had time to head back to CeCe for a little nap before catching the shuttle out to the Evening Session. We had also attended the evening glow on Saturday night. During the evening sessions, a collection of balloons gather on the launch field and inflate but instead of taking off, they show off their colors by "glowing."

In this video, not only can you get a glimpse of the wonder of the glow, but you can also see just how many people were in attendance! There were over 728,000 total in attendance for the Balloon Fiesta this year

(most of them with cell phones BOL).

This video can be found HERE

One of the many things that make the ABQ International Balloon Fiesta unique is the ability for the Fiesta attendees to get up close and personal with the balloons and crew.

In my final video, I put together a montage of a few of the balloons we had the pleasure of getting close to watch inflate. 

HERE is where you can find this video

The icing on our weekend CeCe cake was the "bonus mass ascension".  Monday morning, before packing up to leave, the wind started blowing the balloons right towards our campsite!! All of the pictures you see in this post(with the exception of the girls) were taken within 100 yards of Cece. This includes the teal balloon in the video taking off in the last video. What a beautiful way to end our visit to the ABQ International Balloon Fiesta.

(You might have noticed most of the video footage has been sped up. I wanted to share as much as possible, but realize that you may not want to sit and watch hours of video. I have visions of a full length video for those who want to watch, I'll let you know when I have that put together and on YouTube)

 

 

Thanks so much for being patient with all Mama's 

balloon obsession stuff.  It's always nice making Mama happy...

we get more treats that way!!

  

We are joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for the 

Happy Tuesday Blog Hop this week!