Temecula Balloon Festival

Photo Club outing synopsis: For the 5 of us awake enough to attend the Temecula Valley Wine and Balloon festival on Saturday, June 2, we had plenty of opportunities to catch that elusive Balloon Launch shot that only happens in thefirst few hours of daylight. We arrived at the venue at 6:00 AM and milled around with about 50 other spectators while the event organizers hunted around for the key to let us in. The key finally arrived about 15 minutes later and it looked amazingly like a 3 foot long bolt cutter. Once they cut the chain and let us in, we took the obligatory group shot in front of a balloon gondola. 30 minutes later - things started happening - but not where we were. Due to the low cloud ceiling and the prevailing winds, the balloons were trucked about 7 miles away from the venue in hopes that the balloons could eventually land at the festival location.We all piled in a car and headed out to the spot where the balloons were launching. On the way we were entertained by one of our members who spent 4+ years working for a balloon company and was part of the very first Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. He explained how balloon technology has changed over the years. It was fascinating to learn that one of the reasons that the Albuquerque, NM area is so popular with balloonists is due to the wind pattern found in the area. They call it the Box. Winds are from a constant direction at a specific altitude, a different direction at a different altitude. We arrived at the spot (a dirt field - no admission $$ required) where about 35 balloons were setting up and preparing to launch. We set a time to meet back at the car for about 90 minutes in the future. Our unnamed balloon expert said that they would all be gone in 45 minutes (he was exactly correct on this count). We were able to get quite close for photos of the launching process of many of the balloons. Some members ofthe group even helped with launch procedures! We saw balloons take off in ones and twos until they were all in the air. None of the balloons were able to go very high in the air due to the low clouds.We then drove back to the festival location. Along the way, we saw most of the balloons coming down well short of the festival grounds. Back at the festival - we rode a tethered balloon approx 30 feet inthe air (about 4 minutes total). We spent some time walking throughthe festival displays and shops and taking pictures along the way.



Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took that day.