Albuquerque Balloon Festival – Day One

Last year when we were at the Good Sam Rally in Phoenix, AZ I was lucky enough to win the Fantasy Tour grand prize, five nights at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. Our package includes a premium campsite with power, water and one tank pump out, access to a hospitality room, coffee and snacks every morning, two dinners, a tour of Old Albuquerque, and much more! This is something hubby and I have always wanted to attend but the timing doesn’t really work out as it is held this time each year and we usually don’t head south until the middle of October. However this wasn’t something we could pass up so we headed south earlier and hope that weather will allow us to head home earlier. Even if we can’t get home earlier we are still with in our time frame for BC Medical, which allows us to be out of the province for seven months, and since we complete the IRS 8840 form every year we think we will be okay with the US Government as well.

Still in the Walmart parking lot …. It looks like this balloon is going to land on Maxx’s roof 🙂

Our experience didn’t start off great. The directions provided to our parking spot were basically non-existent and there were no signs. There were many volunteers directing traffic to the various lots but they really had no idea where we were suppose to be, so we ended up in several different lots before finally finding the right place, and all of that involved some fancy maneuvering by hubby!

However once we arrived in the right place everything was awesome. The gentlemen that directed us into our site actually knew how to guide an RV and for the first time ever I didn’t have to get out and direct hubby in. The spaces are tight, but we knew that going in and honestly we have more room than we expected.

We have already met our neighbours, whose unit you can see in the above picture. They are a nice couple from Gilbert, Arizona and so considerate that they were not even going to put out their main slide because they thought we wouldn’t have enough room! We quickly told them we had lots of room, and we do.

Once we were all registered we ran a few errands and then headed back for our orientation at 2:30 p.m. Orientation was followed by happy hour with free drinks, dinner, and then finally balloons!

Tonight was the Glowdeo and Fireworks and I will let the pictures tell the rest 🙂