Wednesday, September 29 - We moved to the Balloon Launch area this morning. We pulled out of the Enchanted Trails RV Park about 9:15 and within an hour were settled in at the Balloon Launch Area. We are boondocking (no electric, water or sewer hook-ups) in what you might call a gravel parking lot. We'll live with our onboard water, sewer holding tanks and battery or generator power for the next 12 days.
Looking at the parking lot.
We pretty much just sat around and enjoyed conversation among friends this afternoon and evening. Tomorrow is the first day of work (training). The first launch comes on Saturday morning.
Thursday, September 30 – This was our first day of work. To put it nicely.....they are very unorganized. We reported for training a little early for our 9:00 am start. We pretty much stood around or did busy work for about the first hour. We then took a tour of the launch area and watched a video on balloon crew safety. We then returned to the sign-in area and helped register chase crew volunteers.
Inside the “Landing” tent.
Some one is having a good time.
This is where it all happens starting on Saturday morning.
The field is 78-acre grassy field. That’s the size of 54 football fields.
Beautiful backdrop.
One of the several beer gardens.
There is entertainment throughout the day on the big stage.
Paul and Marsha working at the Chase Crew table.
The corporate sites.
We did receive are volunteer gift bags. A beautiful nylon winter coat, a balloon sweatshirt, various balloon Fiesta trader pins, tickets for the Volunteer Party on Monday, the Albuquerque Zoo party on Wednesday, the Awards Party next Saturday, and our official ID badge that gets us into any of the Fiesta events. They have a great breakfast for us every morning starting at 5:00 a.m., snack at 9 and lunch beginning at 11. Here we go again…going to gain all the weight back we just lost from Ohio and Florida. OH MY!!!
Give us a few days for the next update. We are working everyday and crewing a balloon, so time is limited.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you back soon. Enjoy your day.
Practicing for Yuma are you? Sure hope they are a little more organized now and that things are going smoothly. Have fun and post lots of pictures of the balloons.
ReplyDeleteBalloon Fiesta is so much fun. It is one place that we both agreed would be a good place to return to again some day. Being a part of the launch will be even better. We also stayed at High Desert RV once as well as the big gravel parking lot. Some of the balloons landed right in that parking lot! Keep looking up and duck!
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