Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Anniversary Vacation - pt 1 - 10.11.19 Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Evening Glow

This month we celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary. Actually, we've been celebrating all year with special trips, long weekends, and a couple shows. (Next year, we'll probably stay home and replace our windows.)


Our second big trip was to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, NM; something we've always wanted to see but never dreamed we'd actually get to go.


It exceeded our expectations! I came back with over 1,400 photos. Not to worry, I won't make you scroll through all of them. But there will be quite a few! So that you don't get bleary-eyed seeing one balloon after another, I'll break up the posts with some pix of other places we visited.


This group is from our first evening. It was a balloon glow of the special shape balloons.


The evening kicks off with skydivers who somehow shoot fireworks from their chutes - or maybe their feet! One flies in with an American flag.





As the sun went down...


...the moon rose behind the mountains.


As you scroll through the pictures, you'll see the balloons glowing as it gets darker and the pilots start to fire them up.



Of course, Darth & Yoda were very popular!











 Sorry for so many pictures! The special shapes were just so much fun and every time one lit up, I went giddy trying to get a picture.



And it was just so hard to decide which ones to post.


Keep in mind - this post is just a sample!






You just feel like a kid walking among these silly balloons.















They print a high quality program book that includes a photo of each registered balloon (550 total!) and where it's from.


Not all 550 balloons are on the field at each glow and not all 550 participated in the early morning mass ascension. I didn't count, but there must have been hundreds of these special shape balloons that first evening.



My next post will be something different and I'll follow that with the morning lift off on Oct. 12.
Keep scrolling to the next post!

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