Imagine waking up and seeing 500 hot air balloons soaring above your RV? And getting to see this every morning for 9 days! Truly an amazing sight.
Then they start to land, and you are just feet away from the landing field. And some of them don’t make the field, but land right in between the RVs that are parked. Wow and Wow.
Every balloon is different. They come from all over the world. Australia, Brazil, Canada and Europe. And from all different US states. Each balloon has to have a chase crew, and there is a place where you can volunteer to be on the chase crew, but you have to be on the field by 4:30 am. They help guide the balloons to a safe landing spot and move them across obstacles so they can lay the balloons down to deflate them.
Then you have the special shape balloons. They were supposed to go up the second Thursday of the Fiesta, but a storm blew in. It started blowing in the morning, dust and pebbles, then turned cold and rain. This was the busiest day of parking RVs. I felt so sorry for the guys that were parking the RVs. They got dirt in their eyes, then wet and cold. We were in the registration shack, checking them in as fast as we could. At least the women were dry, not warm, because we had to keep opening the windows to check people in.
Cold, windy, rainy day at the volunteers tent and registration shack!
RV’s lined up side by side waiting to be shown to their parking site.
Free Shuttle bus down to the take off field and all the vendor tents. 4 or 5 of them daily, morning and afternoon. But the next morning dawned clear and calm and the Special Shapes were up in the air!!! 
Aaron (looks like Elvis to me) Angry Bird and Hummingbird
Pigasus and Arky (Arky is from Grants Pass) Hummingbird, Arky and Little Beaver
Basketball, Saguaro Grande Dude, Pumpkinhead Joelly bee and Sunny Boy
Joelly, Joey Little Bee and Lilly Little Bee. Betty landing
Bob the Lighthouse & Ad balloon Hummingbird
Lady Jester Little Angel
Little Inspector Cameron Doll (looks like Snow White)
Little Wizard Old Lady and the Shoe
Party Panda Peg Leg Pete
Pencil Boy Pigasus
Pumpkin Head landing Saguaro Grande Dude landing
Sarah the Witch Smokey the Bear
Tic Toc Squirt and Chief Responder
Darth Vader Rocket Boy (Looks like he is landing on the bus).
Lady Sun Oggy The Friendly Dragon
Farm Chicken and Rocket boy In The Buff
Nellie-B the elephant Gus T Guppy
Scuba Diver Betty Jean the Butterfly
All the special shapes have names and I’ve tried to put quite a few pictures of them in here. I have a book to look at and identify their names and where they came from. The book was given to the volunteers. So nice to have and it will be a coffee table book for us!!!
It is not all work for the volunteers, although we scatter during the day, some on the field, some at park and ride and some in the gift shop and the arts and crafts tent, we try to get together for pot lucks and happy hours. Below we are celebrating Jill’s birthday with a happy hour, pot luck and birthday cake. Jill and her husband worked the park and ride. They were down on the field by 4:30 am and worked until noon, then back at the field by 1 pm and worked until 9 pm. Long days!
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