Little known fact- Albuquerque is one of the best hot air ballooning locations in the world! This is because of what's known as the "Albuquerque box," a perfect combination of low humidity, altitude, mountains to the east, and wind currents that creates a path for the balloons to travel around the city and end up back where they started... theoretically...
Each balloon has a "chaser car" that basically drives erratically all over the city to follow the balloon and pick it up in case it doesn't follow the box! So this is the one week a year when traffic can get a bit tricky here! Jenny was here for the first weekend of the balloon fiesta and we had heard so many good things about it, so we decided to get up early and go for the morning session. They do a dawn patrol around 6:00 am, which is about 10 balloons that go up to test the conditions before they decide that it's safe for all the other hundreds of balloons to go up at 7:00.
It was tough getting up so early on the weekend but it was a beautiful sunrise and well worth it! We got to walk around the field and get up close and personal with all of the balloons as they were prepping to launch. It was really interesting to see all that goes into getting them opened up enough to actually start the flame. They use huge fans and have people actually walking around inside the balloon while it's on the ground to help get it open.
Hundreds of balloons all launch within an hour of each other and it is an incredible sight!
There are also a bunch of special shapes including Darth Vader and Yoda, a giant cow, Smoky Bear, and lots of others.
As if that wasn't enough, they also had live chainsaw carving!
It was an awesome morning enjoying one of the ultimate Albuquerque experiences. To top it off we enjoyed some of the best Bloody Mary's EVER at a place right up the street from our house. The weekend Bloody Mary bar at Scalo is $8 for anything you can fit "into" your glass including sliders, crab legs, shrimp, fried chicken wings, taquitos, giant soft pretzels, donuts, and more! No food order necessary!
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