Up, up, and Away!

Byron and I got to go on a hot air balloon ride on Saturday morning. We were given passes to go in 2009, but due to busy lives and bad weather, the plans were always postponed until this week. It was really fun. We had to get up at 4:15am (not so fun) to check to see if the flight was a go. Then we met up with the ballooners at a parking lot in SE Calgary.

We then loaded into the vans and found an empty soccer field near Mount Royal University to set up the balloons. When the basket came out of the trailer, I commented that it really was just a big basket like the kind you could get at Michael's.

The flight was really fun. So peaceful. I thought that I would be more nervous on the way up, but you really don't feel the lift because it is so gradual. It was so quiet up there when the burners were not being used.

I loved being able to see almost all of the city at once. When we were going over Heritage Park, I was trying to take pictures from across the basket. Dale, our captain, said that he could turn the balloon for me. That was convenient.

We saw a lot of swimming pools. Who knew there were so many pools in backyards in Calgary? (We only have summer for a max of 2 months in this city.) There were some lovely landscaped yards and we passed right over some very expensive large estates.

What a different view of the world.