Tag Archives: hot air

Landing the Balloon Where You Can

I posted about the hot air balloon over our town in this post.  At the end of that post, the balloons was descending behind the trees for a landing and I was driving off to find them.  It turned out that I had forgotten about a field between the rail tracks and the highway.  I came around the corner and the ballon was on the ground but upright sitting in the field.  It looked pretty incongruous.

I was clearly not the only person intrigued by this as a bunch of vehicles had gone down the normally quiet road alongside the field.  The team was actually still burning as they maneuvered the ballon to the edge of the field to give themselves space to deflate it.  Most people got bored with the view, but I decided to try and get photos and video of the whole sequence of deflating the balloon.  The light was fading rapidly at this point.

A bunch of the crew grabbed the lines to the top of the balloon as the top vent was opened up.  The balloon started to sag rapidly but, once they pulled it over to a certain point, the vent was too low to let the warm air out.  Then they waited while another person gathered up the envelope and squeezed the remaining air out.  Finally, it sagged to the ground and the final gathering up was quickly completed.  By now it was quite dark, and I figured it was time to go home.  I am not aware that they use the field to land normally.  I wonder if this was a bit of an urgent landing as the light was fading fast and the low winds were limiting options.

Hot Air Balloon in Woodinville

Heading home on Sunday afternoon, I saw a hot air balloon overhead Woodinville.  Passenger flights are a regular feature here but I was interested to see if I could work out where they were routing.  I decided to follow them.  I managed to get a couple of places where I could stop and get some shots as they flew above.  One of these was not far from home.  At this point, they seemed to be descending quickly.  As they dropped below the trees, it was clear that they were landing.  I wasn’t sure where this could be but jumped in the car again to see. Where they ended up.  More to come…