Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico

We have always wanted to see New Mexico, really I'm not being sarcastic; for some reason this surprises people. I guess we are suckers for the unknown. This years balloon festival, and some other circumstances, were just the excuse we needed to get out of town. Apparently New Mexico is the land of enchantment AND the national hotbed for ballooning. All just trivia until you see it for yourself. It was really amazing, and to think we nearly left town without seeing one balloon.

We spent the first day of our trip in artsy Santa Fe. What really caught us off guard is how old the city was (1607). When I think of really old colonial settlements I think of the East coast. I had forgotten about those Spanish Fathers wandering around the west. While in Santa Fe we saw the oldest Church in the USA and the oldest public building. The area around the Plaza was full of museums, art galleries, and tourist trap gift shops.

From Santa Fe we took a scenic drive down the turquoise trail to Albuquerque. Along the way we stumbled across Madrid, NM. As we drove through town it felt like we had been there before. We soon realized that this was the town they filmed "Wild Hogs" in. We saw lots of bikers and hippies while there. We also happened to time our trip with peak pine-nut season. So we spent some time on the side of the road hunting and gathering.

We then road the worlds longest ariel tramway to Sandia peak above Albuquerque. Unfortunately the town was full of tourists for the balloon festival so we waited in a Disneyland like nightmare line for a couple hours. The view from the top was amazing. Fall colors were just starting to speckle the forest.

That's about the time things went wrong. A storm blew in, that cancelled that nights balloon festivities, and we got stranded for several hours at a train station. It continued the next day with the mornings mass ascension also being called off due to the weather (unfortunately we found it was canceled after we had got up at 4:30 in the AM and got ready). Through it all we met some really nice people; the kind of people that restore your faith in humanity. So we started to pack up and get ready to head home when we had the same idea that comes to us at the end of every vacation, lets just stay one more day. We really wanted to see the festival and had prepaid for everything so... we stayed. And we were really glad we did.

That evening they held the "night glow". This is where they tie down the balloons and once inflated they twinkle and glow all different colors in the dark. By night fall there was several hundred balloons on the field for the show. The operators could then light up the balloons by turning on the torch/flame thrower. We were awestruck by all the balloons glowing around us, and words cannot explain the experience when the announcer called "all glow" and the entire field lit up.

The next morning we once again stood in awe as more than three hundred balloons lifted off with the sunrise. There was just so much to take in as one balloon after another floated skywards. After they launched we watched them dot the sky and drift away into the morning sun. As we left the field that morning we were so glad that we could see the balloons and also so grateful for all our other many blessings.