Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
October 1 & 2 2022
This weekend was magical! Literally a dream came true! The last 2 years in October I did something related to a lantern or air balloon. My first year living in the United States I went to an air lantern festival, like the ones in Tangled! In Pennsylvania. My second year in the US I went to a water lantern festival in Portland, Oregon and this year I went to and hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque!
This is a big international festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico! (I got another new state of the list!). It’s a 10 day festival, and we were there on the first day! When you buy tickets you pay per session. One session is half a day. So you either pay for the morning session starting at 4.00am or the afternoon session at 4pm. Tickets aren’t expensive at all! I was so surprised when I saw that! You pay $15 a session + $20 for parking. We went to the Saturday afternoon session and Sunday morning session.
This year it was the 50th anniversary of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta! Just a fun fact.
Denver
Instead of flying to Albuquerque we turned this trip into a road-trip, because why not. Me and 3 friends flew to Denver, Colorado and met up with my friend who lives there. We spend the Friday night in Denver and left the next morning, around 7am to drive for 7 hours to Albuquerque.
The drive was super fun and actually way faster than I thought it would be. As always we had sing-a-longs in the car and we talked a lot. When we finally arrived in Albuquerque around 3pm we needed to wait until 4pm to check in into our motel. Yes we stayed at a very creepy motel, it was cheap so yeah… The motel was fine, the people who worked there weren’t as nice, but it is what it is. It caused some irritations but we survived. At 4 we checked in and got ready for the festival!
Balloon Fiesta
We arrived at the festival around 5.30pm. We walked around the whole festival site, it was so cute. There were many stands with souvenirs, small companies who were selling hot air balloon themed things and there were many, many, food stands.
Next to all the stands there was a big grass field where the launch of the hot air balloons would be happening. We got ourselves some donuts and fount a spot in the grass to sit and watch the sunset. We had so much fun taking funny pictures and we just had a blast sitting there. After a little while we wanted to get funnel cake (funnel cake like fright pancakes, it’s sooo good!!) and we wanted to get a turkey leg!
Yess a whole one!! But unfortunately they were sold out, so we didn’t get one.
While we were in line for food we saw that the clouds turned darker every time and the wind started to act up… Then we heard that the balloons couldn’t take off because of the wind… and the ‘activities’ for the night got cancelled. On the planning they said they would have done the hot air balloon launch, a drone light show and fire works. But unfortunately it didn’t work out because of the weather.
Albuquerque
We left the festival a little early and tried to find something else to do, because it was still early. We ended up at a brewery bar in Albuquerque and we bought tickets for a comedian in downtown. I’ve never been to a comedian, so that was for sure a new experience. It was different than I expected actually. The room was small and not like a bar with a stage and round tables we could sit on and drink something, like you see in the movies. The set up was still cute tho and we enjoyed the show. After the show we called it a night and went to bed, because!! We needed to wake up early to see the sunrise with the air balloons!!
Balloon Fiesta day 2
We woke up early and tried to be at the site at 6am because according to the schedule that is when the launch would happen. Unfortunately the wind was still too strong for the balloons to go up. We talked to an information booth and he told us that when the yellow flag is out it’s a maybe, when it’s red it’s cancelled and when it’s green it’s a go! We walked around, enjoyed the sunrise! What was beautiful!! The whole sky was orange and the clouds were incredible. We got some hot chocolate and found ourself a spot to sit on the grass field.
After half an hour we saw that the first balloons started to fill their selves up with air and the flag changed to green! Everyone stated to cheer and got excited! We all stood up and found a spot to watch the balloons. It just started with 2 hot air balloons who started to get blown up. But not much after that many many more started to get filled with air as well. The whole field got filled by hot air balloons and it was amazing! I took so many pictures in the beginning already, thinking that was beautiful. But oh no, wait until they take off!
The first balloon who went up had an American flag on the basket and they started the National Anthem. It was an amazing experience! I was so happy when I saw the first one going up! But it was even better when more went up and the whole sky was filled with hot air balloons! We saw so many amazing shapes, colors or themed balloons. It was magical and I was so grateful to be there with my friends! We had so much fun and you could really tell how happy we all were during this festival.
After a while it was time to leave and head back to Denver. We don’t wanna miss our flight. We drive another 7 hours back to Denver, Colorado. We had dinner in the city and then my friend drove us back to the airport.
This trip was really like a dream coming true. I have been looking for hot air balloon festivals for so long and I knew about the one in New Mexico, but I actually thought I wouldn’t be able to go there at all. But look at me now! I actually did go! This is gonna be a memorie I will never forget!
Thank you for reading my blog :)
Here are all the links for the different lantern/ balloon festivals! There are different locations and organizations that organize lantern festivals, but here are the ones I went to.
https://www.nightlightsevent.com - Air lantern festival in Pennsylvania (they have different locations)
https://www.waterlanternfestival.com - Water lantern festival in Portland, Oregon (they have different locations)
https://balloonfiesta.com - hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico
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