On August 29, 2009, my Mom, Dad, Emily, and I embarked on a wonderful adventure! Emily and I had received as a christmas gift, a few years ago, a hot air balloon ride! Well it took a few years, but we finally went! We got to the park in American Fork at 6:20am, helped prepare the balloon for flight, and finally took off around 7:30am. I was able to help hold the cords while huge gas-powered fans blew air into the balloon. Once it was blown up, the pilot added heat and it rose vertical in the air. Before we took off, the pilot let off a black helium balloon to test the wind direction and wind speed. He was mainly making sure we didn't float off into the mountains or over the lake. It's crazy to think the pilot cannot steer the balloon, yet the balloon travels with the wind, so at different altitudes the wind travels differently, allowing you to travel different ways and speeds. And you just don't know where you'll end up until you get there!
After we took off, my cute little blue corolla is the second car from the left. It was fun to see things get so small as we rose into the air!
A look into the inside of the balloon! I thought it turned out pretty cool!
A view of Utah County, BYU in the far distance, and of the two other balloons that took off at the same time as us!
Emily enjoying the view from up above!
I took this picture myself, I love doing that! In the background is Bob, the pilot, not the builder!
Dad looking down below. It was fun to see what we could spot from an aerial point of view! Things look a lot different from up above!
A view of Micron Flash Technologies in Alpine, the point of the mountain, and a look into the Salt Lake Valley. Micron, unknown at this time, soon became our landing site!
A view of Alpine valley, nestled into the mountains! I love the view!
The pilot wanted to try heading into the Salt Lake Valley, so he decided to land in Alpine, get more fuel, and head back out. Yet, when we landed, he decided the winds weren't very good and we stayed down. However, we didn't know we had landed on private land belonging to Micron. Ya, we soon had a security vehicle and an emergency on-site response team responding to our landing site. We weren't sure what to think. We were more than fine, but the pilot was a little nervous.
Emily is helping them deflate the balloon!
At the end of deflation! Our nice security man up on the hill in the red, and the emergency response guys standing next to him. I guess we made their morning pretty exciting with our unexpected landing, because saturday is their slowest day! They let Bob off with just a warning to try and avoid landing in this area.
Dad helping Bob and crew stuff the balloon back into the sack. They said the balloon weighs over 300 pounds and the basket weighs around 600 pounds. Wow! Overall, it was an amazing experience and we had an eventful landing!
4 comments:
Oooohhh looks like so much fun! Great pictures!
Looks like fun. I have always wanted to do it... but my fear of heights keeps me form going.
That must have be freakin awesome!!! My sky experience has to be skydiving...one day that will happen. Hey, thanks for the reading magazine, I found out it wasn't the latch but Norah's tongue that is the problem, she has a thrust that makes it hard...just needs retraining :)
You are the best, I sure miss having you up here but things are going so well and life is getting back to normal. I'll send pics later.
Cool! Derek and I had the chance to do that in Cedar, it was way cool!
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