Hot {air} Balloon Excursion

I feel like I could be considered an adrenaline junkie, so when mark opened our Christmas present from his Dad and step mom I couldn't have been more excited to find out that we were going {UP}. By Up I mean a hot air balloon ride! Now Mark on the other hand NOT so excited......If you don't know mark very well, or even those who do, maybe surprised to find out that we have never had Christmas lights on our house, not because we don't want too, but because Mark is terrified of heights! So therefor hot air balloon ride was the last thing Mark was going to be jumping up and down for!

In the beginning.....
Well we were to arrive at 6:45 AM, Brrrrr!!! Mind you at deer valley airport...We get there sign in find a van waiting for us in which we packed 12 adults in a van to travel to a remote location where we were to take off from....2 things; ONE, as mark and I are sitting in this van looking around at twelve adults we are thinking, are we all going in the same balloon and TWO is the weather going to hold up in order for us to go up today??


The Inflation.....

After what seemed like 30 min. of driving we finally get to the umm DESERT, middle of no where! we now sign our life away, as you can see mark doing in the picture and watch ONLY two men put together this whole balloon that will be holding twelve grown adults in! (Can you tell I'm freaking out about twelve people being in the same balloon at once?!?)

As we are waiting for out balloon to be put together, we now watch another balloon leave ground, the nerves start kicking in and i now am getting anxious, nervous and EXCITED all at once! C'MON! 

UP, UP and Away.....

WE ARE IN GUYS! FINALLY!!!!

This fire and so say MOTOR is what makes this bad boy GO and its HOT and its LOUD! 

Did I say LOUD!?!?

Oh ya and this is our Pilot! I forgot his name already, pretty funny guy though! --------------------->>>>

           

AND we are off!!! So INTENSE....... 

Our Shadow! 

All the rest is scenic views I took, ENJOY see what you can spot, downtown, flagstaff, four peaks, anthem, lake pleasant, and lots lots more.....

Oh P.S. once we got in the air we were on cloud nine literally all the jitter bugs were out of Mark and I and we both did so well. Most all Mark made it through....With only one hiccup keep reading! 

This is where we took off from! Soooo High! 

This is a balloon below us, we were at about 4,000 feet up in the air....

Now the FUN photographer side comes out in me....I feel like I took this picture symbolizing what we were in... A WICKER BASKET literally! Pretty amazing shot.....

The look through Mark's eyes! 

{Giggle, Giggle}

Back to Earth Again....

Ok now PREPARE for landing, unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of our landing that's because i was on my butt in the bottom of the basket having a panic attack while mark held me tight with his legs laughing....YES this is the truth. So we are done with our about an hour in a half flight when we now have to prepare for landing, well not us but the pilot :0). If you didn't know just a little briefing about flying these beasts.

HOT AIR BALLOONING 101

 *No the pilot cannot steer...He steers but traveling up and down in altitudes and uses the wind to take us in our hopeful direction....

*Also when the pilot gives the balloon heat its suppose to carry us up in the sky, BUT it has about what feels like a 5 min. delay.

So with that said back to landing....We are trying to land and there are so many power lines that it makes it hard to do...so we tried to go down a few times and then we'd shoot back up, mind you we are so low and this balloon is so loud and its only 9 o'clock in the morning, that people are coming out of there houses taking pictures and waving to us....So we finally find a location were we want to land but mind you its just about a three acre kind of open lot in someones BACKYARD yes backyard........we start to come in WAY faster than I would have ever liked to, AND way closer to a house and fence then I could have ever imagined...and boom we hit ground, back up again, boom hit ground, back up and again and a final boom to finalize the landing......Oh my, now the pilot is yelling for a few gentleman to jump out and move the basket over so that when the balloon deflates it doesn't hit close power lines....HOLY CRAP, they should have seat belts in these baskets for landings like that! No one prepared me for this and I was scared....At this point the owner of the home (Who happens to look like the UFC fighter Chuck Liddell) comes running out with his pit bull...Oh lord I thought we were going to get eaten! The homeowner actually ended up being a charm {<3} and took pictures while repeating,

"its not everyday a hot air balloon lands in your backyard!" 

:0) SO FUNNY!   

CHEERS We Are Alive! 

Hot Air Expeditions, Inc.

www.hotairexpeditions.com

602.502.6999