9/19/08 Balloon Glow!

We went to the Balloon Glow today - it was wonderful! We got there early and discovered they didn’t have a place to park and lock up the bikes, so we walked around with our bikes, but that was OK. There was a really big crowd there; some families brought blankets and picnics, the rest of us bought snacks from the vendors. We talked to some of the folks working with the balloons about how they controlled them and watched them fill the balloons. As dusk fell, all of the hot-air balloons were filled. Of course, as soon as the balloons were filled, the air inside them started to cool down. So the balloon owners kept re-heating the air. There are two heater vents that push hot air up into the balloon – one generates a lot of very hot air and the other one heats air but it doesn’t push it as hard. That second vent actually causes a bigger flame, and it’s what causes the balloon to “glow” at night. There might have been 20 hot-air balloons up in the park that evening, and as the owners warmed the air to keep them up, balloons all over the park glowed. Sometimes just 3-4 were glowing, and sometimes 10 or more at a time. It looked simply amazing!