Thursday, April 19, 2012

“I want to take you higher…”

After Judy and I made our way down off of Sandia Peak, we ended up heading over to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival Park.  Albuquerque is the Hot Air Balloon Capital of the world, for sure… every year they have a huge festival for hot air balloons here!

This is the Balloon Museum below, and you could house an NHL Hockey Team in here… must be big bucks in ballooning…

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Lots of natural light, and lots of balloons and things flying inside!

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“I want… I want… I want to take you higher…” as Sly and the Family Stone would sing!  Below is Stratolab V.  This was attached to a balloon, with 2 occupants, and reached the amazing height of 113,739 feet on May 4th, 1961. 

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Below is the Good Beer Blimp… this was one of the first prototypes to be attached to a blimp and flown.  It is the old fuselage off an old airplane…

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It still had lots of buttons and dials on board…

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Below Judy gets to fly a hot air balloon.  This was a great simulator, and you were able to see where you were flying on the 3 large screens in front of you.  You had to land on a target… Judy missed the target, but did land safe!

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Below is the gondola of the Double Eagle V.  This was a gas balloon that made an 84 hour trip over the Pacific Ocean… it was shaped actually like a boat in case it went down… it didn’t! 

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Out behind the Museum, I didn’t get a picture of the hundreds of acres of open land that is used to allow all the balloons take off during the festival… very cool and worth seeing.

Yesterday, we decided to take in the Albuquerque Zoo and Aquarium… no end to being a tourist.

This facility is simply excellent… very easy to walk around, well laid out, well presented, and busy! 

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No, nobody’s birthday, they were just here!

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My Uncle Harry below…

 

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By far, the pride of America below…

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This polar bear had it’s own waterslide, but was snoozing instead… beautiful day… 80 degrees…

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A little bit of down under…

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I walked underneath this mountain lion before knowing he was there… yikes…

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Seemed everyone was sleeping in the afternoon.   This guy was real big!

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They had 4 elephants… great exhibit.

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Below is the Aquarium… again, very well presented.

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A great shark exhibit… did not put in too many pics inside, kind of dark and blurry…

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The Zoo and Aquarium were about 2 miles apart, so they have a great little train to take you from one to the other…

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This guy wanted to see my camera…

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This peacock below guarded the restaurant…

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Phew… still not caught up on all our stuff we have done yet, but getting close… pretty soon we will be in Ontario, and all will be boring again!  No, not really…

Till tomorrow…

6 comments:

  1. Great couple of days you've had. Both very interesting. That balloon simulator would sure be fun. I'm surprised you didn't try it.

    Does your Uncle Harry read your blog haha?

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  2. Thanks for the tour, don't rush home still need to warm up a bit!

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  3. That Hot Air Balloon Museum sure looked interesting - thanks for the tour.

    I bet it'll be great to get home soon and see those beautiful grandkids.

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  4. You keep us interested with all these tourist oriented blogs. There is so much to see out there. Thanks.

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  5. thanks for the tour and the great pictures...we are currently enroute to home ..but I'm ready to get there...

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