{"id":19102,"date":"2022-12-09T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=19102"},"modified":"2022-12-09T21:31:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T05:31:44","slug":"albuquerque-balloon-fiesta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/09\/albuquerque-balloon-fiesta\/","title":{"rendered":"Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

The turnaround point for our New Mexico trip was the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.\u00a0 We had talked about it for years, and it combined nicely with our stops in Tucson and Alamogordo (and the visit to Tinfiny Ranch).\u00a0 I shot all the photos in this blog with my iPhone.\u00a0 I had the big Nikon D810 and its boat anchor 24-120 lens with me, but my leg was acting up (an old motorcycle accident injury) and I couldn’t lug that thing around any longer on this trip.\u00a0 I might have shot better photos with the Nikon, or I might not have shot any at all if I didn’t have my cell phone.\u00a0 Adapt, improvise, overcome.<\/p>\n

The deal on our visit to the Balloon Fiesta was a tour group.\u00a0 It’s really the only practical way to get in to see the balloons.\u00a0 Here’s the deal:\u00a0 Albuquerque’s population is 550,000 people (it’s the biggest city in New Mexico).\u00a0 The Balloon Fiesta, however, draws a cool one million visitors.\u00a0 Just getting to the field where the balloons lift off would take an hour or more due to the crush, and if you did that, you’d have to park far away to find a parking spot.\u00a0 If you’re part of a tour group, however, you ride on the tour group’s buses from your hotel to the balloon field, and they take you right up to the gate.\u00a0 The City of Albuquerque has done this event for years and they have it dialed.\u00a0 They designate special bus lanes during Balloon Fiesta week.\u00a0 \u00a0Logistically, it’s a much better approach.<\/p>\n

What the City can’t control is the weather, and hot air balloons are sensitive to the weather.\u00a0 If there are electrical storms, low visibility, rain, or high winds, the balloon’s won’t lift off.\u00a0 And there were plenty of all these conditions that week.\u00a0 Our tour grip told us we’d be making three trips to the balloon field, but there were no guarantees we’d get to see the balloons lift off during any of our visits.\u00a0 Two of our visits were early morning affairs (we arrived at the field before sunup), and another one was in the late afternoon.<\/p>\n

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The Balloon Fiesta field periphery is lined with vendors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During our first early morning arrival, it was cold and too windy for the balloons to lift off.\u00a0 \u00a0The balloon fiesta had a backup plan, though, and in the distant skie we observed a light display.\u00a0 At first I thought there was a large board with lights, but then the display lifted into the pre-dawn sky.\u00a0 I learned it was all down with multiple computer-controlled drones.\u00a0 That was impressive.<\/p>\n

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Cell phone photography is like halitosis…it’s better than no breath at all. Each of these lights is carried by a single drone. They were probably a mile away when I took this photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The images changed.\u00a0 We couldn’t see or hear the drones, and there was nothing from our location that would indicate they were drones.\u00a0 It was impressive.<\/p>\n

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A Puebloe Native American symbol, commandeered as the image on the New Mexico flag. This is the area where we had breakfast. Breakfast was a part of the tour package.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During our second visit, which occurred in the afternoon, the wind conditions weren’t acceptable and there was a thunderstorm moving in, which prevented the balloons from ascending.\u00a0 But it allowed a parachute display, and I grabbed a few photos of it.<\/p>\n

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Selection.com is a personnel agency.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Evidently the smoke generators the parachutists used create debris.\u00a0 One particle hit me in the face.\u00a0 Fortunately, it caught me in the cheek and not in my eye.\u00a0 That would have made for an interesting lawsuit.<\/p>\n

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Another photo of the parachutists.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even though it was too risky for the balloons to inflate and ascend, there was a lot going on.\u00a0 It was fun walking around and taking iPhone pictures.<\/p>\n

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A fire truck at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our third and last visit to the balloon fiesta field was on a brisk Sunday morning and it was the charm.\u00a0 After being skunked on two prior visits, the word was out:\u00a0 The balloons had the okay to inflate and liftoff.\u00a0 The winds were suitably low, visibility was good, and there were no looming electrical storms.\u00a0 It was a go for a mass ascension, which kind of sounds like a religious experience.\u00a0 In a way, it almost was.<\/p>\n

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Balloons inflating after recieving the go ahead. You walk in amongst the balloons. It’s all very exciting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a strange kind of way, being in the middle of the mass ascension kind of reminded me of seeing the whales in Baja. You go out in a small boat and for a while, nothing happens. Then you see a lone whale spout in the distance (like that one balloon you see going up in the photo above). Then, suddenly, there are whales spouting all around you, and then they are right up close to the boat. The balloon fiesta is a lot like that. Nothing happens at first, then you get very excited when you see that single first balloon ascend. Then, suddenly, balloons are going up all around you.<\/p>\n

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Our first balloon going up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Then, suddenly, there are balloons everywhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The cell phone was doing a decent job for me. I would have liked having the D810 with me, but it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The colors, and the vibrance, was off the charts. The balloon fiesta is a photographer’s paradise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Approximately 650 balloons ascended within about 30 minutes. It was impressive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Several of the balloons were more complex shapes, like this Felix the Cat version. There were turkeys and other shapes as well.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This last photo is a panoramic shot, in which you manually sweep the camera through an arc (in this case, about 180 degrees). The iPhone does a suprisingly good job. The actual image is a little over 16,000 pixels wide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A question several of my friends asked is:\u00a0 Did we go up in a balloon?\u00a0 The answer to that is no.\u00a0 You have to make a reservation far in advance to get a seat in one of the balloons (we had not), it costs several hundred dollars, and truth be told, I wasn’t too sure about doing it.\u00a0 Joe Gresh, whom we visited on our trek to Albuquerque, had done it in the past and he told us he and Colleen enjoyed it.\u00a0 Maybe next time.<\/p>\n

If you have any thoughts about visiting the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, my advice is to go for it, and to do it through a tour agency for the reasons listed above.\u00a0 It’s a bucket list sort of thing to do.\u00a0 \u00a0We went with the Road Scholars<\/a> tour group, they did a great job for us, and they kept us busy for the three days we were in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

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Please keep clicking on those popup ads…it’s what keeps the lights on!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Never miss an ExNotes blog:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Berk The turnaround point for our New Mexico trip was the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.\u00a0 We had talked about it for years, and it combined nicely with our stops in Tucson and Alamogordo (and the visit to Tinfiny Ranch).\u00a0 I shot all the photos in this blog with my iPhone.\u00a0 I had the big … Continue reading “Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[66,89,139],"tags":[3127,3059,3128,3129,3130],"class_list":["post-19102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-joe-gresh","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","category-native-american-ruins","tag-albuqueque","tag-albuquerque-balloon-fiesta","tag-balloon-fiesta","tag-hot-air-balloon","tag-hot-air-balloon-photography"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/IMG_3900-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19102"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20183,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19102\/revisions\/20183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}