Everybody Loves Hot Air Balloons

A hot air balloon landing in the RV Park in Verde Valley is a fairly regular occurrence.

For starters, let me explain that I have never yet ridden in a hot air balloon. It’s not that it doesn’t look thrilling, or that I wouldn’t love the view from one. Instead, it’s my aversion to cold—and from experience I know it is mighty cold at daybreak, even here in Arizona in summer.

My first up-close experience with a balloon was when I was writing for a newspaper in Washington State and was assigned to interview an eighty-something year-old woman who owned a balloon business. She asked if I would like to watch the launching of one, so I agreed to meet her at some ungodly hour in a field somewhere to get photos and watch the takeoff at daybreak. I did get some great photos (property of the newspaper) from the inside of the balloon as it was being inflated.

Then the woman asked if I would like to “chase” the balloon to its landing spot. What she meant by “chasing” was following by road and trying to figure out where it would land as it dipped behind trees and hills. That’s when I learned that hot air balloons don’t have a specific landing area because it all depends on air currents. So we chased it for miles until it finally started drifting downward, but I couldn’t get close enough in the car to get photos, and I certainly wasn’t going to hike through muddy fields in that damp, frosty air!

Since then, I’ve witnessed several balloons lifting off and landing here in Arizona, and specifically, settling to the ground here in the RV Park outside Cottonwood. This morning was one of those occasions. About 6:30 AM I heard the familiar wh-o-o-o-sh, wh-o-o-o-sh of one overhead and looked out the window to see it coming down over the park, and then grabbed the camera.

Again, this is an instance where traveling by RV increases the chances of witnessing hot air balloons both aloft and landing because both activities often coexist in high-tourist areas with wide open spaces. RVers can find plenty of opportunities to hitch a ride in one, if they wish. I had only seen a precious few balloons aloft before we started RVing.

Above is one of the photos I snapped early this morning.