Some morning balloons

Greetings, earthlings. These are photos from last Sunday morning in the Albuquerque area.


Near my sister's house is a lookout area that faces the balloon park. We started there, but obviously it's quite a distance from the park, so the balloons are just like dots. Still, it was cool to see so many at once. This is during mass ascension, when many balloons go up in the same general area and hang out for awhile.


I guess this is lavender? I don't know, but obviously I thought it was pretty.


Here's my niece at the lookout, just to give you an idea of the scene.


The structure on the lookout.. I guess it's just for looks? Anyway, there are walls and benches, and R said that the day before there were several people there to watch mass ascension.


Zoomed in a little. You're might see some similar photos, and I won't apologize. Okay, I'll apologize just once, and not with my whole heart. Sorry.




We drove out to another location to take more pictures. The sky was nice, but the lighting was such that it was hard not to just get balloon silhouettes at first.




A couple of balloons were coming close, and the one on the left was making what seemed to be an emergency landing (because the landing place wasn't ideal). Everything in the balloon world seems slow and graceful, so "emergency" is a funny word.


It's down, and now they have to move it somewhere that isn't fenced in, so they kind of float/carry it over the fence and settle it down in the parking lot nearby.


Meanwhile, I'm getting some other photos.


But there's broken glass here, so they laid down some tarps. It was all so intense and dramatic. ;) They grab a rope that is already attached to the top of the balloon and you can see a couple of guys trying to bring it down.


Balloon paparazzi!




Things are progressing with taking down the balloon.


We then drove nearby to an empty lot that had another view of some balloons. This photos is called Slum Balloon.


Let's put the black-and-whites together!


I loved this tree, but it was hard to get a good shot with it because of other scenery/wires.


You can kind of see that the lower balloon has an alien on it.


Then we drove to one more location, and saw this Darth Vader balloon on the way. There are some interesting and fun balloon shapes, but I didn't show you many here. I'll have more on the next post.

UNRELATED: I was just taking pictures of a nutria that's below my deck right now. First nutria sighting of the season! You can look totally forward to photos of that. :)