Albuquerque, NM...day 2: Balloons!

First Hot Air Balloons

On Tuesday, we enjoyed a leisurely morning, drinking coffee in the sunshine before heading back to Albuquerque for more sight-seeing. We started with lunch at Jason's Deli, a chain restaurant, but a very, very good one. It has a superb salad bar and excellent veggie sandwiches. Yum.

Up, up and away!

First Gas Balloon

After lunch, we headed over to the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum. WE LOVE BALLOONS! The Balloon Museum celebrates the city's love affair with hot-air ballooning as well as gas balloons, a whole other species. The exhibits highlighted the history of ballooning, beginning with its introduction near Paris, France in 1783, and on to now with elaborate balloon festivals all over the world. The first passengers on a hot air balloon were a sheep, a rooster and a duck. Having survived the short flight, the cautious King of France then allowed human passengers on balloons, and folks began taking to the skies in them in droves. Women were among the first balloonists and they even began parachuting out of the balloons in aerial shows.

Around the world in eighty days!

Chic-i-Boom

We learned about the firsts in ballooning, too, like first to cross the English channel,  first to cross the Atlantic, first to cross the Pacific, first to circumnavigate the world, longest flight, highest altitude, farthest distance in the shortest time and so on. We read about balloons with different shapes, like the DiGiorno Pizza balloon, Smokey the Bear (just his head!), a Harley Davidson motorcycle, the Space Shuttle, a soda can, the Disney castle and on and on. Upstairs, we found the Carmen Miranda balloon, called the Chic-i-Boom. Ha!

Extra, extra, extra,
extra large pizza, anyone?

We also saw exhibits about the science of ballooning and how the heated air inside the balloon causes it to rise because the air is lighter than the air outside the balloon. We tried our hand at a demonstration of this, with limited success until we got the hang of it. We saw some of the capsules and baskets used to hold the pilot and passengers for a few special balloons, as well.

We enjoyed every bit of the museum, especially when we were trying to pilot a balloon on a simulator. Yikes. Lots of crash landings and tree damage. We never got anywhere close to the target landing spot, but we laughed a lot.

We chatted with the museum store clerk who mentioned (and we totally agree) that nobody ever outgrows balloons. We had so much fun and hope to some day come back for the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta held every October. Oddly, sharp pins are a huge part of ballooning tradition, with collectable pins given out for every event, competition and adventure. Hmmm. What fun!

Pins for every ballooning event and specialty

Next, we hoped to see the city from the Aerial Tramway on Sandia Mountain, the longest tramway in the world. But, alas, it was closed for routine maintenance for 10 days...perhaps, for the better, though, as two more storms were rolling toward us on the horizon. One seemed to be a rainstorm, similar to yesterday, but the other was obviously a huge duststorm with light brown clouds of dirt blowing all over. It was nasty looking, especially when it blotted out the mountains. Robbed by a one-armed bandit at a casino, we headed back to Santa Fe to wait out the wind, dust and a tiny bit of rain. Ken whipped up a homemade posole soup for dinner (so tasty!!) and we settled in for the evening.

What a fun day!