bobanddenisewanderlust

We were up again at 4:45 AM. We will break that nasty habit tomorrow morning. No more getting up that early for awhile! We met Terilu and her daughter Terilee and her friend Row on the way to the bus. We went to the Nilz balloons again. The balloons were put on hold at 6 AM and then again at 7 AM.  This picture is of the ‘dawn patrol’. They go up first, and all the pilots watch what happens to them.

Here are a couple of balloons that we have not seen before.

But by 8 we were given permission to set up and to launch. Patrick and Boby decided to only launch their smaller yellow balloon with a cactus on it. Since this is a lot smaller, it was pretty easy to lay out the tarp and the balloon.

Then we were told to load up in the chase vehicle, and off we went at a snails pace, as there are a lot more spectators here today. The spectators walk right in front of the vehicles, so Boby had to go very slow. Patrick piloted the balloon today, but Boby is also a pilot. Paddy is 14, and has his pilot license and has done his first solo flight. He was proudly wearing his pilot patch on his jacket.

We chased them to the field behind the RV park. It was really muddy from all the rain. With 12 of us in the Class C motor home, we sank in the mud. So we all hopped out, and Boby was able to back the motor home out of the mud. The rest of us walked/ran over to help Patrick, but there were a lot of people from the RV park holding the basket down.

We moved the balloon from the field into the RV park road, which was dryer. We laid down the tarp, then Patrick dropped the balloon onto the tarp. Before we could do this, there was another balloon there, and we packed him up and got him out of the way. Once the balloon was folded and put into its bag, we had to shake out the tarp and air it out. That was a chore. Even with all of us, and there were about 15 people, we were all holding on to the tarp and flapping it up and down. Finally Patrick brought out one of the fans, and we used the fan to dry the bottom of the tarp. Then we folded it up, bagged it, packed up, and headed back to the field.

Here is Paddy with the two dogs who have been with us the entire time. They are allegedly getting  the air out of the tarp by laying on it. 

While we were stuck in traffic, we watched some professional Para shooters drop into the Fiesta.  Now it was party time!

Several of the groups got together and had a very large tail gate party. There were probably 50- 60 people there. It was fun with lots of champagne, margaritas, elk burgers, and Boby had sausage and biscuits. As usual with a pot luck, there was lots and lots of food.

Here are the snow covered mountains from the field.

We left a little after 12 to go back to the motor home and the happy pups.  We skipped lunch due to the tailgating and took a short nap. At 4 PM we went over to the happy hour. We had a group pizza dinner, which was excellent, and we all ate way too much!

At 6:15 we went to Brian and Kathy over to the “glow” and watched the spectacular fireworks. Afterwards, we ended up walking back to the motor home, as the bus line was way too long.

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