Up Up and Away!

One of the highlights of our trip was getting to go on a hot air balloon ride. Since the babies couldn't go we had to split up into two groups and go on different days. James, Scott, Kevin, and I were all in the first group.

We had to be there pretty early and there was breakfast while we waited and watched them get the balloons ready.

This is the balloon that we got to ride in. It was the biggest of all of them there. I asked the captain how much just the balloon cost and he told me this big one was $85,000. Whew!!!

All loaded up! Our captain, Ed, was pretty awesome and we learned a lot about hot air balloons. The world champion in hot air ballooning is actually from Kansas. Represent!

Patti and Kevin drove with us that morning and the plan was for them to follow us in the car. Unfortunately, James had the car keys with him and we didn't realize it until we were a couple thousand feet in the air. Whoops!

We are in the balloon in the upper right hand corner. They always have a test balloon that will go up high right away and find out what the wind is doing up there. We were the test balloon that day and we went to over 11,000 feet right away. It was fun seeing the other balloons that were at lower altitudes really moving with the wind but we were basically just over where we took off from. Later we came down and let the wind take us away.

The view was absolutely incredible. I thought I would be more nervous than I was. I think I was more nervous about dropping my binoculars so I just stopped using them so I could relax. 

I loved going over water so we could see our reflection. When you are close to land they call it skimming. 

When we were really high we could see Pike's Peak and downtown Denver off in the distance which was pretty cool. I think I liked be a little lower though so you could see what was going on below. 

It was a perfect day to be up there and we are so grateful for the opportunity to do something so incredible. The captain said the winter is actually the best time to go even though the season is in the summer months. I would love to go after a fresh snow!