Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Trip

We have been wanting to visit the biggest hot air balloon fiesta in the world for some time.  Something like 500 balloons go up and you can walk right among them.  We stayed at our friend's home (thanks Wally and Ronni) the night before and woke up at 5:30 to get ready to go.  We left at 6 am and it took a full hour to drive 6 miles to the parking lot since all the roads were parking lots as something like 100,000+ people were trying to get there.  After parking we saw a balloon land in our parking lot and lots of people jump in to help it avoid obstacles.

 

Here's a photo of the scene where all the balloons take off from.  Hundreds of them being filled up and launching all the time.



 

Here's the underside of a two balloons that had just lifted off (you can see the flames in the lower one).

 

You can see hundreds of them in the air in the background behind Lucas and Travis.

 

We enjoyed watching them fill up this giant dinosaur balloon.  You can see from this photo how close we were to all the action.

 

Here's Lucas not so happy after Brian had told him "Luke I am your father."

 

We enjoyed a $7 funnel cake and watched the action from a distance for a while.  You can see the dinosaur balloon on the left.

 

Here's an elephant and an angel balloon among many others.

 

This gives you some idea of the scene after many people had already left.

 

Another view of the thousands of people there among the balloons.

 

Here's some video of the exciting things we were able to see as the balloons were filled up and took off, and also the hundreds of balloons already up in the air.  Fun times but very crowded with people.  It's a must do once in your life kind of thing.