Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Day 3

You'd think by yesterday, day 3, there wouldn't be much more to share, but not true. Every day has been new and exciting!!

I watched the dawn patrol balloons take off from the comfort of our fifth wheel. The launch field is about a mile away, but you can see them take off real well from our campsite.

It was another perfect day for flying. Several of the balloons have the New Mexico symbol on them.

Once the sun rises over the mountain peaks, the balloons really glow, especially the brightly colored ones.

Although, this was the third day of watching, I still saw some new balloons.

Perfect entry for a pest control company!

There are six countries represented this year. Prior to Covid as many as twenty countries participated. This is the balloon from Mexico. I heard there are also balloons from Denmark, Germany, Spain and Great Britain.

I saw this balloon on Saturday and thought it was a dog. It's actually a very cute seal.

It's really hard to convey the scope of how many balloons are in the air at one time with pictures. Here is just an example of what it looks like. I shared a video on Facebook earlier that gives an idea of what it looks like as they come over. The big building in the background with the blue line around the top is a General Mills cereal factory. We've been told that if the wind is right, it can be an overwhelmingly sweet smell.

Quite a few balloons have landed in a field behind RVs just a few rows away from us. Yesterday morning I walked over to watch them. I must say, I didn't realize how hard they come down. There are chasers in the field to help pull on the ropes, but most of them still came down quite hard and dragged along the ground. Several had their baskets tip over upon landing as you can see in the second picture below. One guy actually shot out of the basket as it tipped over. I hope he was okay. One of the chasers told me that one basket hit barbed wire, and a lady got scraped up. 

On the Monday evening news, they reported that three balloons had hit power lines. Luckily, no injuries were reported. I'm glad I decided not to go up in one. My risk tolerance is not what it used to be :)

We continue to have a great time. Only one day to go before we leave. 

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!