Lake Havasu 13th Annual Balloon Festival - January 18 - 21st Thursday Part 1

Thursday morning, a beautiful day with clear skies and no wind. The festival opens at noon. We left at 9:30 to scope out spots for Ray to take pictures. At noon, Ray caught the shuttle to the park's entrance gate and got our armbands. $20.00 each for the 4 day event. He did a walk around to find out where all the venues are. There are pontoon boats, fifth wheels, classic cars and Toyota vehicles for sale too.

We are lucky the balloons will fly this year. Apparently the last 2 years they didn't fly due to windy weather.

At 3:30 we took the park shuttle from our camping loop up to the balloon field in preparation for the mass ascension at 4:15 pm. We walked around checking out all the vendor stalls. There were some beautiful things to buy, but we don't have anywhere to put them lol.

Vintage cars for sale.

42 Cadillac and 46 Cadillac in behind

The main stage.

Our ride back and forth from the campsite.

It's pretty cool walking among the balloons being readied to fill with air and fly. Each balloon have a crew of a pilot and 4 to 6 other members to help get it up into the sky and retrieve it where it lands. They also have boat crews on the water to pick up anyone and drag them to shore should they get blown off course.

There were a couple of Canadian teams.

After the ascension, we walked over to the food vendors and had a bite to eat listening to the live band playing. Back to camp via shuttle, so we could put on warmer clothes. The lady driving the golf cart said she would wait for us to get changed and then took us back to the balloon field in preparation for the Field of Fire for 6:15 pm.  I found us some seats to wait for the show to begin. After it started Ray was able to walk around amongst the balloons to get "up close and personal" with them. Spectacular.

A short video of the "Flicker".

We managed to grab another shuttle back to camp at 7 pm. A busy day, nice to get home and sit.