ontheroad-Albuquerque

Albuquerque Balloon Museum

Above is a picture of David and me posing in the gondola of a balloon. This is a unique museum. It deals with the history of balloon flight from its earliest French beginnings. Some went 22 feet and then one went 22 miles and now they go around the world. They originally got the idea from watching smoke ascend from a fire and attempted to make a balloon that would be powered by fire. These were hot air balloons. Hot air balloons have a hole in the bottom of them as is shown in the blue balloon. The zepelin is a gas balloon. On the first photo I tried to catch the size of the actual balloon. Later on they discovered gas and were able to enclose Hydrogen in the balloon. Now there are even hybrid balloons that combine the gas and hot air. People tried a lot of things that did not work such as oars to move around to steer the balloon.

Albuquerque is apparently a great place to fly these balloons because it is surrounded by mountains and the wind currents are low and just right. There are lots of balloonists in the area. Every October they have a Balloon Fest with distance races and contests for balloon designs and shapes. We were there during this week but we couldn't see any balloons go up as it poured rain and was windy. They won't fly them if the wind than maybe 12 mph. For the shape balloons the winds must be below 8mph because the shape balloons are more difficult to manuever.