Balloon Fiesta!

Last weekend Pete's parents made the trek out from Prescott to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta (and Pete's birthday!). For those of you who didn't know, the Balloon Fiesta is THE global hot air balloon get together of the year. People come from all over the globe to do a mass ascension with their hot air balloons. The festivities last for two weeks.

We rolled out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to make the first mass ascension. After some early-morning adventures with traffic, we finally parked and had just a few minutes before they started blowing up the balloons.

First, the rolled out the balloons on the ground and pointed an industrial fan into them to inflate them a bit with cool air.


Once they were filled up about half-way, the pilots blasted the burners to heat up the air so the balloons would float. They started with the basket on its side, and as the balloons inflated and rose, the team tipped the baskets up so the fire wouldn't touch the balloons themselves. It was neat!


There were seriously hundreds of balloons all inflating simultaneously. Sometimes they banged into each other and you could tell the pilots were irritated at how squished together they all were.

There were referees wandering around giving each balloon clearance to take off in an orderly fashion. Once they started taking off, we just wandered around watching the fun.





After we took off from the balloon fiesta, we went out to breakfast and then made a road trip up to Los Alamos. We took the scenic route, and stopped at this nifty waterfall right next to the road.

Once we got to Los Alamos, we went to check out the Atomic Museum and this wacky place called The Black Hole. The Black Hole is a Los Alamos Laboratory salvage yard that carries every piece of Dr. Strangelove equipment that your heart could desire.


The guy that owns the store, Ed Grothus, is this wacky ex-weapons manufacturer, now pacifist who is convinced the world will end in the year 2012. He owns this shop and collects the weirdest stuff including "doomsday stones" he built himself because he wants to leave a landmark behind for the aliens who will visit our planet after we destroy it. The store was pretty cool, and I could totally see the guys from Mythbusters getting supplies there. It was a disaster. Parts and wires and consoles and anything else you could imagine were just laying on top of each other to the ceiling. It was quasi-organized, but not really. There was also a bunch of weird artsy-hippie things outside like a giant daisy.


We took the road home through Santa Fe, and stopped at a restaurant that Pete and I had seen on Food Network. It was a hamburger joint called Bobcat Bite that had won Bon Appetit Magazine's distinction of "Best Burger in America". We had to go see if it was true. The burgers we flippin' enormous, and cooked to order. I haven't had every single burger in the country, but of the burgers I have had I would say this was the best. Except for Pete's of course!