For several years I’ve been saying I wanted to go to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, and finally after getting inspired at our own smaller balloon launch here is Colorado Springs, I got on the ball and made it happen! Reservations at the KOA Campground in Bernallio (about 30 minutes north of Albq.) and Balloon launch tickets bought, we were ready for a weekend adventure!
The thing about balloon launches is that they happen early in the morning REALLY early! That combined with the fact that we were quite a ways out of town, and this event is a REALLY big deal, meant that we had to get up at about 3am. We drove the short distance from our campground to the Rail-Runner parking lot and left the car. Since parking is next to impossible downtown, I had bought tickets on the 4am train to get us there.
The weather was not very promising. It was cloudy and overcast. When we arrived, it was still dark, and many of the balloons were lighting up for the pre-dawn glow! We hoped the weather would improve as the sun rose, but it didn’t, not much anyway. It was COLD! We bought a few souvenir sweatshirts to try to stay warm, and hoped they wouldn’t cancel the launch.
They officially decided to keep it on, but unfortunately many of the balloon launchers independently decided it wasn’t worth the effort or risk. So only a fraction of the balloons went up, and many never even bothered to set up at all.
The one advantage to this, however, was that it wasn’t nearly as crowded as usual, and easily possible to get right up next to the balloons that were setting up, and we even got to chat with a few of the pilots! And a rather impressive number did end up launching, especially a little later in the morning. And even in it’s diminished state it was still a more massive deal than our local launch!
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After we had seen enough, we headed back to the campground via the Rail-Runner. Another disadvantage of staying in Bernallilo (and taking the train into town) was that we had to go all the way back to get our car, then drive back into Albuquerque again. But perhaps it was worth it.
We actually made it back in time to eat a late breakfast for lunch at the campground’s pancake hut, then drove into town with plans to take the ariel tram up Sandia Peak. The weather was still not cooperating, and the ride up wasn’t very scenic due to the dense clouds and fog, but it made the adventure cool in a different way! We explored a little above the clouds at the top of the mountain before coming back down.
In hindsight (isn’t that ALWAYS 20/20!) we should have eaten dinner while we were in town, but instead we thought we’d drive back towards Bernallilo, since everything around Albuquerque was so crazy busy. But as we would find out, Bernallilo isn’t much for restaurants (or much anything else for that matter, as we would discover on a future trip!). We couldn’t anything open. Nothing at all! So we ended up driving all the way back to Albuquerque and still having to wait about 40 minutes for a table at Carrabbas! Oh well, lesson learned. Hopefully.
The next morning we got the tent packed up then headed for the Zoo! It turned out to be really cool – lots of animals we don’t get to see at our own zoo, and Lily fell in love with the baby hippo that was napping on it’s mama’s back! We also got to see a Cappyberra, the world’s largest rodent. Looks a bit like an overgrown hamster. REALLY overgrown, lol! And I really liked the chimpanzees. The weather today, by contrast was beautiful, and we could even see many balloons in the air from the zoo.
But finally it was time to head home. What a great trip! We hope to make it a yearly habit now – not only are the balloons really fun, but there is so much else to do in Albuquerque! We didn’t even being to scratch the surface with our 2 days here!
