Angel Fire, NM, July 13/14
The weather here has been perfect so far, although cool in the mornings. Debbie has been communicating with a young balloon pilot (Morghan Chando) since last year’s disappointing festival and was hoping that she and Ashley would be able to get a balloon ride with him. Unfortunately for them, he was assigned a sponsor by the festival organizers and those folks were going to be his passengers for most, if not all, of his flights. (Maybe they’ll still get lucky.) Now, Debbie is looking into what it takes to sponsor a pilot for next year, lol.
The first morning appeared to my untrained eye to be ideal ballooning weather; temperature upper 30’s at sunup, clear, and a light, 3 mph wind. We arrived early and listened in on the 7:00 a.m. pilots’ briefing. It sounded to me like everything was ready to get started for flying, only to hear a “but” from the flight director. Winds were expected to pick up and it was decided that they wouldn’t fly for safety reasons. He did say that they believed both Saturday and Sunday would be great days for flying. Since there were a fair number of spectators present, a majority of the pilots did decide to “stand up” their balloons and put on a static display. It was fun being right in among the balloons as their crews got them unpacked and inflated. Debbie and Ashley hung right in close to Morghan’s balloon as it was stood up, all while I wandered around taking pictures.
Since the ballooning ended early for the day, we went back to the RV resort for a free waffle breakfast. We then took a drive up to Red River for their Arts and Wine Festival. After walking around and eating lunch in town, we set up our lawn chairs in the park and listened to some live music for the rest of the afternoon.
LyndDebTravel 