The Adventure Caravan's Balloon Festival Party is over and we are on the road again. We are staying in Elephant Butte State Park in New Mexico. We may go out and kayak on the lake to go to the Rio Grand River and put in.
We had a wonderful time at the Balloon Festival. It was amazing. We had balloons and I mean a lot of balloons (around 500 each day) and they launched 8 out of the 9 days we were there. I understand this is almost unheard of. This morning it was a bit breezing so not many of the balloons went up, maybe only around 100.
Last night we had a steak and all the trimmings for our farewell dinner. It was very tasty indeed.
General Mills has a cereal plant near the balloon festival location. The smell was like someone was baking a cake all the time. It was such a great smell.
I think it was Wednesday we had some really big winds and rain here. Needless to say no balloons went up. We had a big tent with Adventure Caravans where they served all 143 of us breakfasts, socials with goodies and other events and it almost blew down. We stayed at camp when the others went on a tour of the town. We had to call the Wagon Master to let him know of the problem. Rog went and picked him up at the museum to get him back so he could get someone there to fix it and help keep it here. I stayed home to rest and worked more picking up and saving peoples stuff from blowing away.
I am writing trying to up pieces and parts of the time we spent at the Balloon Festival that I having gotten to blog about. One of the things was the news reported about the festival was the rv camping area. They said it was as big as Raton, a town north of here, but the festival campground had more dogs. LOL This is probably true and not so much of a joke.
I will leave you with more pix of the Balloon Festival.
On the field waiting to help launch one of these bad boys.
When they inflate or deflate the balloon someone has to be at the crown holding it steady.
Nelly-B, Belgium
Tic Toc
Brazil
Wells Fargo, Center Stage, Albuquerque, NM
This one would inflate but all most all of the time would not launch. They said the winds are very tricky with this one.
Hummingbird, Brazil
Arabelle, Canada
She is 30 years old and has many patches. She also has a 16 person crew to get her inflated and deflated and back in the bag.
This particular morning she just didn't want to stay up. 
Pencil Boy, Reno, NV peeping around
Triple Crown, Brazil
These were taken on the field pic of balloons: Butterflies, Canada and Dragonfly Canada
Cazoo-ee Danville, IL This is the tail end of the zebra, but I wanted to show you the vents that are in the balloons. The balloons can not "steer" they are at the whim of the wind. They can go up by heating the air in the envelope, or rotate by opening and closing the vents. The vents are the darker pink patch on the balloon.
Cosmos 1 Fort Worth, TX
Smokey Albuquerque, NM
In The Buff
Lubbock, TX
Arron, Canada
Yellow Jacket, Brazil
I just looked at the pix I took of the mass ascension of the Special Shapes balloons and I have so many I want to share and some interesting stories that go along with them. So I will blog about the balloons again tomorrow so I do not have a too many pix on one blog. So Balloon Festival is to be continued.
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