Southern Grins and Sunshine: Hot Air Balloons Galore!

I absolutely love hot air balloons! I think they are the coolest thing to see in the sky! A balloon you can ride in? They're almost as cool as air planes. I read that in 1783 the first manned hot air balloon flew up. Can you imagine seeing one flying in the air back then?

So, I like to go to events very prepared. I make sure I know if I need to bring anything special, location, what the weather will be like and whatever the schedule for the event is like. After planning this trip since this summer with a friend I felt like we were super prepared. We were staying at her parent's house so that we didn't have to make a crazy 5 hour round trip. Ew.

We left a little later than planned, but it wasn't a big deal because the next set of hot air balloons weren't supposed to take off until around 4:30... we were going to make it there around around 3:00. My friend is from this area and had never heard of the festival, so we figured it wasn't going to be that much of a problem with traffic. Wrong! lol. We sat in traffic for like 30 minutes and were told by some chatty cops that we had to go to a parking lot farther down the road and take a shuttle to the place where the balloons were taking off.

We got in line behind probably 30 people with a gazillion strollers waiting for this shuttle the cop mentioned. After waiting for about 20 minutes I asked a couple in front of us how long they had been waiting. They had been waiting for over half an hour. A shuttle finally drove up and it was one of those small buses that holds like 15 people... not happening. By then we only had 45 minutes til the balloons were supposed to take off. We were not about to miss this after the planning and long trip. I asked the man how far it was if we walked... there were a lot of people walking. He estimated about 1.5 miles.

We struck off on the walk at a fast pace hoping to get there quickly. We're young and a mile and a half isn't far, right? Don't forget this is close to the mountains and we were walking up hill. After the first hill we crested we were hoping to see SOMETHING that said "you're close!" Think again, all we saw was a never ending line of cars. So, we power walked some more. We saw some people leaving the event and asked how much farther. They said, "Oh, about 20 more minutes." Okay old man, a mile and a half? Kiss my grits.

By now we had been walking about half an hour, up hill, hauling a heavy quilt. We saw this family on the side of the road selling collard and turnip greens and WATER! They were very encouraging and told us it was about another 15 minutes. COME ON!? These people must not have learned about estimation in elementary school.

We finally made it 45 minutes later, ready to pass fall out. Once we got in the gate we were greeted by 10,000 people... I do not lie. It was the friendliest and most well behaved crowd I have ever been around in my life.

We got to watch all of the balloons get blown up right in front of us. I was so cool to see all of the colors rising up.

Hot air balloon dominos?
Photography by KES

In total we got to see 47 balloons take off. It's cool enough to see one in the air, but all of them were incredible to see... like big dots of color in on a blue canvas.

Photography by KES

My favorite one!
Photography by KES

Photography by KES

We even got to see the Ghost Buster car, a monster balloon (literally) and eat stuffed grape leaves (Greek)! :)

Who you gonna call?
Photography by KES

Oh, and guess what? That mile and a half was actually 4.5 miles... the shuttle driver clocked it. You better believe that we did not walk back! We ran to get in line after we saw the balloons in the night light. All in all, the festival was so much fun! Definitely worth the 4.5 mile walk and would definitely recommend it!