Our next adventure over fall break brought us to the Land of Enchantment. We were excited to explore New Mexico and another part of the southwest. Starting off our vacation and speaking of southwest, we were caught up in the Southwest Airlines weekend of abrupt cancellations and delays. We discovered our flight was cancelled in the night at 4 am while getting our things together to get to the airport on time. We had a lot on the line and needed to get there by Sunday for the fiesta and so panicked and rushed we found a last minute flight out of Chicago that evening. Even though flights were still cancelling left and right, ours miraculously took off and we landed at ABQ that night. We got to our hotel and checked in and realizing we needed to get up in just a few hours to the balloon fiesta grounds, tried to get a bit of sleep!
The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is certainly a bucket list item and we highly anticipated this particular experience. I had our hot air balloon trip booked for many months and had been closely monitoring the weather and watching live feeds of this amazing event. For 9 days every October for almost 5 decades, this international fiesta is held in Albuquerque and has over 500 hot air balloons every year. It is the largest in the world and we literally couldn't wait!
Sleep deprived but excited we checked in and had our VIP tickets to get a delicious hot breakfast and coffee before our flight at 7 am. There was a storm brewing over the area and dumping large amounts of snow throughout the west but we were still hopeful, even though there was quite a breeze when we arrived. They cancelled the balloon trip at 6:30 and we were so disappointed to say the least! The person who checked us in said, "better to be down and wanting to be up than being up and wishing you were down". Although we couldn't argue with that it still was SOOOOOO disappointing.
We went out of the tent and were hopeful to see all the balloons at least inflating. We saw less than a dozen balloons, walked around and even though it was great to see them up close, we could certainly see the impact of the wind. They ended up cancelling the entire last day of the fiesta. This experience will certainly have to be put back in the "bucket" as I can imagine what a fantastic spectacle it would be!
This guy is wrangling the balloon to keep it upright!
Bleary eyed and exhausted we went back to the hotel and all took a long nap! We had a southwestern style lunch and decided to head to Santa Fe. We had hoped to see some of Albuquerque on Saturday, but since our flights were scrambled we will also have to leave that until "next time".
We stopped by Petroglyph National Monument on the way and watched the informative video at the visitor center. You have to drive from the visitor center to see the trails and we were running out of time this afternoon so decided to head on to our VRBO.
Snakeweed
Fourwing Saltbush
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