New Mexico - Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

October 09, 2018

New Mexico - Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

My eye has always been drawn to colorful things. Textures, shapes, flat and multi-dimensional are all fair game, as long as there is color. I’ve also wanted to attend the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque.

So, there we were in Tucumcari working on our routing to Tucson. Lo and behold, our route was going to take us right through Albuquerque, and if we slowed down a bit, we could make our transit through the city during the Balloon Fiesta. Okay! Another tick off of the ‘bucket list’!

It was a great day. It was an early day – it started with a 3:30 am alarm, and out the door by 3:55. Tom dropped me at the Park and Ride lot to take the bus to the event, and we’re both glad we did it that way. I was on the balloon field by 4:30, but ahead of most of the traffic that was now stuck behind a large accident! Tom headed off to find some birds.

Not having been here before, I did quite a bit of research on what happens, where is the best place to be, and that sort of thing. I was able to find a few details, but I was mostly winging it this morning.

The park is laid out in a big grid pattern with some paved pathways down and through it. Small, pylons with tiny led lights in green, red or blue, created the quadrants on the field. Wandering down one of the paths, I choose what I hoped was about middle of the field. It’s pretty dark, and most of the people I spoke with, or heard talking, said this was also their first time so we were all hoping we were in the right spot.

Keeping an eye on the balloon support vehicles, it soon became evident that I had chosen a spot right at the center of the action!

I was in the middle of the “Dawn Patrol”. This is the group of balloons that goes out before light, with special suspended led lights to show the wind directions and speed.

It was still pretty dark and hard to even see what I was focusing on! But an occasional burst from the pilot or a headlight helped to light things up a bit.

A laser light show created some interesting effects on the balloons and sky.

Soon the whole row was upright and lifting off. And so were balloons in the other rows.

At sunrise, the national anthem was played, a balloon with the American flag lifted off, and 7 planes flying in formation, trailing red, white and blue smoke, flew right down the center of the balloon field. All of the balloon pilots do a ‘burn’ whether their balloon is up or not, it was pretty spectacular, and it also helped warm things up!

As the sun continued to move up into the sky, so did the balloons. Hundreds of them! There were 567 balloons registered for this event. I guessed about 300 actually went aloft. It’s an amazing scene.

I would be focused on a shot, or twenty, and remember to look around to see the sky dotted with balloons. There was little to no wind and many seemed to be pinned in place. There were times when I’d put the camera down, and just stand and enjoy the sights.

I wandered around to various balloons, looking for the colorful, perfect shot. Taking several I’d look in a different direction and see another grouping of balloons, or colors and off I’d go!

There is a special shapes category of balloons and several were out this morning.

Some with cute names like this one….. Cat Sass! This one made me think of my ‘sister’ and her kitties!

There were tons of people – possibly the 80,000 that were predicted. I think because everyone is walking around looking up, you aren’t really aware of all the people… until you go to the restroom line or the food lines! Then there was just way too much humanity!

But the fun of seeing all the balloons made all the little stuff just go away!

It was a great morning. We are very lucky that we were there on the first day. Tom joined me for the evening session which was called off due to high winds. The winds continued through the night and all the balloon events for the second day were also cancelled.

Guess we’re living right!