Albuquerque Balloon Festival. sans balloons.

Since we live only 3 hours drive from my parents, and since Albuquerque hosts the world's largest international hot air balloon festival, we decided, "What the heck?!" and trucked up there last weekend to see it. Of course, ordinarily hot air ballooners take off at the a**-crack of dawn, so we decided to try to get into the spirit of the thing. The thing is, regardless of how rare it is to see me rise, Romero-zombie style, pre-dawn, the weather would not cooperate. So this jumble of toy hot air balloons were practically the only ones inflated to be seen. We witnessed the sad attempt of several MASSIVE balloons to inflate, but the winds were too strong (I was so worried the winds would cause the flame to ignite the fabric of the balloons themselves). Later in the day it actually hailed for a spell!
Here our pinwheels demonstrate the reasons the balloons could not do the mass ascension we were all there to see. sigh. I don't know how much this makes me want to try to do this again!
And a mechanical model of how the hot/cool air currents lift propel and return the balloons to Albuquerque offered the only other sight of balloons in motion. Here's a lovely shot of what we should have seen. But didn't. Maybe next year.