Albuquerque - Balloons and More Wild Weather !

Hello Again and Greetings from the 10th Annual RV Rally.

So spring time in the southwest brings some really different weather. Cold temps, snow, winds, sunshine and warm breezes. I guess we experienced all them in a weeks time here in Albuquerque.

We joined about 3000 other RV’ers and camped at the Balloon Fiesta Park on the outskirts of the Duke City. The event is hosted by the Good Sam organization and is held in a different part of the country each year. The drawback to this year’s location was that all the exhibits and commercial vendors were located some 12 miles away from the camping area at the state fairgrounds. The organizers did a poor job of planning for the crowds and only had 8 buses to move the folks back and forth. By Friday nite the wait for a bus ride was over 3 hours. By Saturday, there was plenty of room on the buses, since everybody drove their own cars and trucks !

Some of 3000 rigs !

A view from out the front of our coach.

Up & Away !

They did have some pretty good entertainment (and that tent was near the campsite) and on Friday Neil Sedaka performed. It's amazing how many top hits that man had ! Rita Coolidge stopped by on Saturday and the Osmond Brothers took the stage Sunday nite. We skipped the DooWop band on Monday nite.

Neil Sedaka on stage.

While we didn’t go for an expensive balloon ride, we did get to see them sailing over the grounds and took an interesting tour of the Museum and learned some facts about World War II and Japan’s launching of 10,000 balloon fire bombs toward the Pacific northwest. Hundreds made it across the Pacific and one actually made it to Michigan, but it was done during the winter and not a conducive time for brush fires. Scarily, the balloons could have carried biological agents but the Japanese opted for fire first !

Japanese "fire bomb" balloons.

We had fun visiting the area and seeing the sights. Had to buy a new tow bar for the coach and donated some monies to the Sandia Casino.

Off to Santa Fe and some really high altitude.

We’ll talk again soon.

Gene & Laurie