Balloons!!

Tuesday is our day off and normally that means Doug goes to physical therapy and I do laundry and clean the house. In the afternoon Doug wanted to go to the park to go on some more rides, since we don't get free access anymore after the middle of the month. So with everything taken care of, we decided to check out a balloon festival in Indianola, which is about 10 miles south of here.

It goes on for a week and we really did not expect much, since it is a small town and it is not really widely advertised. Well, we were in for a big surprise. We arrived around 5:30 pm, rented a couple of chairs and found a good viewing spot. There was a nice line of junk food vendors and a two man band was keeping us entertained. It was like a little "Woodstock".

They had a play area for the kids with a little "tractor pull" and there was a nice line of vehicles with balloon baskets lined up at the top of the hill.


On the hill across from us they were marking the ground with an "X", which I thought was a starting spot for the balloons, but I was completely wrong.

About 6:30 pm the balloons were given the green light to start and to my big disappointment some of them just drove away again. We decided to just pay attention to the balloons that were starting and enjoyed the show.

The way the wind was blowing most balloons were passing right above us. We had some awesome views.






So we were watching for about a hour, figured that it was pretty much over and were about ready to leave when we realized that there was a whole bunch of balloons on the horizon coming towards us.

The "X" is actually for a competition for the balloons landing. Every balloon operator has a yellow ribbon with a weight mounted on it and they toss it over the "X" trying to land in the spot.

This is a picture of a balloon trying to land on the "X". Unfortunately I had shot so many pictures of the balloons leaving and coming back that the batteries in the camera died and I don't have more pictures of balloons trying to land by the "X". It really was a spectacular site and I am glad we came out.