One of the best upsides to RV ownership, as we’ve discussed, is the ability to haul around your own hotel room. It’s even better when you park it right next door to a major community event. That’s just what we did in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when we attended the fantastic International Balloon Fiesta. Owning an RV made attending this extraordinary festival even more fun.
If you’re not familiar with the Balloon Fiesta, a short primer is in order. It was started back in the early 1970s, and it’s one of those events that has gotten bigger and more elaborate over the years. As of this writing, the Fiesta typically sees about 800,000 visitors over the course of the week. It’s sort of like a state fair, but centered around hot air balloons — a LOT of hot air balloons.
One recent Fiesta boasted some 620 balloons from all over the world. They inflate, they float, they race… they basically just do their thing. As far as I can tell, there’s not really any point to this frenzy of activity other than to have a good time. So it’s my kind of party.
“A bunch of balloons,” the cynic might say. “Big frickin’ deal.”
Why, yes, it actually is a big frickin’ deal. Have you ever seen a hot air balloon, up close and personal? How did it make you feel? For most of us non-Scrooge types, a flying hot air balloon brings a childlike rush of gleeful emotion. You can’t really explain WHY, but it makes you … happy. To understand the Fiesta, take that upbeat feeling and multiply it by 620 — because that’s how many balloons we saw in Albuquerque. And at times, they ALL seemed to be up in the air.
So how does owning an RV make this sort of experience better?
The “mass ascension” event happens EARLY in the morning, right around sunrise. Everything starts at 5:45 AM, and IT’S ALL OVER by 9:30 AM. Because the fiesta is so popular in Albuquerque, roads to Fiesta Park are jam-packed with traffic. Local residents are told that they need to be on the road by 5AM in order to have a chance at arriving on time.
RV owners had no such worries. Sure, we still had to drag ourselves out of bed pretty darn early. But our “hotel rooms on wheels” were parked right next to the action. It was extraordinarily easy to access the fiesta whenever we pleased. You can walk (less than a mile to the big party), or ride a free shuttle. And if you didn’t feel like taking the 5-minute shuttle trip, you could just hang out by your rig and watch the balloons pass overhead.
The Balloon Fiesta is so popular with the RV crowd, organizers have established four separate campgrounds with varying degrees of desirability. At the time of our visit, the most expensive cost $150 per night, and offered water, electricity, and a five-star view. For $30 a night you got a standard site (with free shuttle service), which allows you to dry camp right next to the action. When we attended, the more premium sites were SOLD OUT. But we were perfectly happy with our standard site.
We left Albuquerque after a few days, headed east. We met fellow RV travelers who were driving to the Fiesta from several states away. I don’t blame them.
For more info on RV-ing at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, check out the official website here: http://balloonfiesta.com/.
Awww. Why is this a private video? I would like to see it too… 😥
Why is the video private?
How do we gain Permission to see the video Sean?
EXPLANATION: Why Our Video is Labeled “Private” And Other Mysteries
Hi everyone, I’m sorry about the “balloon” video snafu. Someday I’m going to do a video about uploading one of these videos when we’re on the road! Sometimes everything goes smooth as silk, and the process takes a few minutes. Other times — THIS TIME, for example — NOTHING seems to work.
Last night starting at about 10PM, I spent about two hours uploading this 135 MB video file from a pretty slow Internet connection. It started processing on Vimeo shortly after midnight, an operation that usually takes 30 minutes or so. By 12:30 AM, I got a message stating that there had been some sort of weird “exception,” so the video did not process properly. Hmmmm.
So I tried AGAIN, and when processing completed everything looked GREAT — until I started actually PLAYING the video. In short, for some unknown reason, it was unwatchable. It looked like someone had zoomed into one little corner of the screen. I can only guess that the original file was corrupt, or there was an error on Vimeo’s end.
So at this point, with the clock almost striking 3AM (!) and me having no chance whatsoever of uploading a repaired copy, I was at wit’s end. I just set the video to “private” and went to bed. Sorry about that. 🙄
I’m about to make another attempt. Wish me luck, and stay tuned!
I see you are in Texas. Do you have plans on stopping in Louisiana? i have some great recommendations.
It’s a shame you didn’t have a chance to go up in one it’s great. My wife and I went on one during our honeymoon many moons ago. Once again a lousy video! 😉 Keep’em coming
Matt
My wife and I are talking about going to this event next year it just looks amazing!How did you fair in the rain he first day?Thanks for sharing your adventures this is my first comment as I just found you guys.
Kim, we love Louisiana, and have visited New Orleans many times — although never with our Airstream in tow! But unfortunately, we won’t make it there on this trip. We go on and off the road as this “long, long honeymoon” unfolds, and are due for a break. We’ve been road tripping for over two months this time out. Thanks for the offer, though, and feel free to post or email any ideas for future reference!
Matt, we were interested in taking a balloon ride — until we discovered the price. Last I heard, the going rate was $395 per person. It might be cheaper to just buy your own hot air balloon and give flying it a shot. 😆 I’m sure it’s a great experience, but we will save it for next time. That’s cool that you went up in one on your honeymoon!
Jim, you raise a good point with regard to the weather. The balloons are of course very susceptible to wind and rain. We caught the first mass ascension event on Saturday morning, and the weather was not yet a factor. But that evening’s events were rained out. Sunday morning’s mass ascension was also rained out. But we saw the Balloon Glow on Sunday evening. Monday morning’s mass ascension was delayed a couple of hours, but that worked out fine for me — we slept late and watched everything unfold from the RV park.
TIP: if you bring an RV to the Fiesta, try to get parking on an asphalt or gravel area. There was so much rain Saturday night that many RVs had trouble leaving their campsites on Sunday morning! Some of the campsites are loose earth, and after the rain they had become mud bowls. I saw a couple of Class A motorhomes and a 5th wheel being towed out of their muddy sites. ($$$ cha-ching!) We didn’t have any issues because we had a good asphalt / gravel parking area.
Overall I definitely recommend the Balloon Fiesta. We had a blast.
That looks like it was a blast! I need to go out there one day, I have family in in Las Cruces, NM. Im glad you guys took so much video! It looks great!
Laura, since you have family in NM, you should definitely make plans to attend someday. It’s a really unique event, in that most of the activity takes place EARLY in the morning (the mass ascension, etc.), and late in the day (Balloon Glow, music performances, fireworks). During the middle of the day you get to take a siesta. 😎
WOW man their proud of there of that. Holy smokes you could fly from home the the balloon festival cheaper on a plane!I will admit it is way cool. we went up on Valentines day in Colorado. You could hear the cattle stomping thru the snow and the cars on interstate 70. The booze at the end was nice too all before 10:00. Man do they know how to party!
Yea Sean, I need to go out there one day with the Airstream! I know all about flying time for ballons, when I was in flight school, they had ballon pilots, man, talk about bad hours!
I would love to give recommendations. What is the email address?
Matt, someday we will find a more reasonably priced balloon ride, film the whole experience, and seamlessly edit it into the Albuquerque piece. No one will ever know! Shhhhhhh 😆
Laura, New Mexico is a great RVing destination. Interesting local culture, beautiful scenery, dry climate, excellent food… it’s a good place to hang out for a while!
Kim, you can shoot me an email at seanmichael@aol.com. Thanks!
sean, we just came back from the pomona rv show. we talked to the guys at the wifi in motion booth and they were playing your video at their booth. looking forward to see it on the site. also interesting in seeing how well it works in the real world.
Dan, thanks for the update! The Wifi in Motion video is rendering at this moment, so it’ll probably be posted here in the next day or so.
I’m going to write a detailed article about our experiences with the kit.
Overall, we’ve been really pleased with it. In fact, there’s not much bad to say about it. The only “weakness” per se is connection speed in non-3G areas. If you are in a non-3G area, the connections speeds can get a little sluggish. But that’s not really the fault of the kit, but rather the service provider. When you’re in a 3G area, the connection speed is excellent. And any way you slice it, it’s really nice to have a reliable Internet connection even when you are boondocking.