Ole Southwest Tour

Adventure Day Four – Hot Air Balloons in Albuquerque

We get up at 4 AM to get ready to go to the Dawn Patrol and then the Mass Ascension at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We leave at 5:30 after having some breakfast. The traffic on the freeway in the dark isn’t much fun in the Model A’s, but we make it to the field in perfect timing.

Balloons inflating at dawn.
A pretty morning with balloons going up

A few shots of some of our group:

  • Jerri sitting, Dan, Larry, Rick and Nancy
  • John and Nancy foreground
    Dan and Rick in the back
“The Twosome”
Lori, Jay and Rose in front – Rick, Tim, Pat and Terri in the back
Some of the balloons are very big! Some can hold as many as 15 people in their baskets.

Some shots of the balloons:

Some are very colorful!
  • Tinker belle
  • Yoda and Darthvader
The Penguin Group

Some Parting Shots:

We head back to the hotel. Rick, John and Dan go down to help Jim try to figure out his car’s problem. I finally go down to see how things are going and find the whole gang down there Larry, Jay and John Hulstrom are there also.

After working on the cars, we decide to do some exploring. Our first stop is to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. It is very extensive and informative. Besides the museum they had cultural music and dancing by native people.

After the cultural center we had planned on going out to the petroglyphs, but simply ran out of time. We gather together and go to the Sawmill Market for dinner. It was a high end food market with a lot of the top restaurants from town, plus brewery, wine bar, ice cream and a dessert shop. Then we ate outside together after each picking their own choices for dinner. It was more like places in Spain with topa bars. Larry and Jerri were to join us and blocks away their car quit again, however when we got back to the hotel their car was there, so hopefully everything is ok. Tomorrow is another long 200+ day so it is to bed for me.