Balloon blast off!

I seem to be posting only something related to photos these days :-\. Arey, what to do? As usual, I have so many "non-photo" things to write about, but somehow putting up the ones with photos seems easier, even though its actually more work (have to select and upload photos and edit them to fit into the format I want). One reason for this might be that I don't have to think about the post as such, just remember what happened ;-).

Oh well, time for our annual Bluegrass balloon festival trip :-D. For the not-so-regular-readers, the balloon festival happens the last weekend of September every year and it consists of races in the morning and glows in the evening. The previous 2 years we have been able to go to the glows only, mainly because its so inconvenient. Louisville is just an hour drive away, but the early morning races begin at 7 AM and to be there at 7, we atleast have to be ready by 5:30 AM :-p. In 2007 I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy and last year had a small baby. This year I wanted to see the race (my dream was to see a sky full of hot-air balloons :-p), so we thought of staying the night in Louisville, seeing the race and then driving back. But well, plans seldom have a way of going right :-p.

It rained cats and dogs all week. So till the last moment we hadn't even decided whether to go, leave alone staying for the night. The festival happens in an open field, so one of the main concerns was obviously the rain. Other meagre ones included the cancelling of the festival itself and the muddiness of the field (its one thing to let your child play in the backyard where even if she gets wet, we have a set of dry clothes ready and a whole thing altogether when you are out :-p). Finally we decided to go come rain or shine on Friday evening. There were a few drizzles predicted, but we thought we could manage.

So off we went. The evening was fine with a few rain drops, but the 3 (!!!) umbrellas we "back-packed" with us literally went to a waste :). The first sight that greeted us was a tethered balloon ride. They started this newly this year hoping to mint more money :-p.




$15 wasn't too bad for a 5 min ride, but babies weren't allowed much to my dismay :(. And somehow I didn't feel like going alone :(.

Anyways the evening went on without any sign of the rain and we were able to enjoy the glow :).




Except for one thing. Snugli was petrified of the balloons! I think I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts - these days we see fear instincts slowly creeping into her. But I was still surprised. She loves balloons, I guess she just didn't understand a gigantic balloon making loud whooshing sounds :-\. She clung to me and even refused to let Sri go anywhere (not even to throw the trash!). For a moment there, I had no idea what to do. I was getting frustrated more and more minute by minute. We tried clapping whenever there was a glow, making fun of the whooshing sound, jumping up and down (basically acting like a clown) and nothing seemed to be working.







Apparently, something did work :). After some time, she started enjoying the countdown to the glow and clapped when the balloons lit up :)).




We were upset about only one point, the parking this time was a bit far away from the balloons and walking for long without any shelter in the muddy road when there was a chance of rain was not really wonderful, to say the least. After enjoying a few glows, we decided to head back. As I said, we had decided to stay the night and so we did.

Next morning woke up early and headed back to the field. It was cloudy but not raining, so I was hopeful that we'd be able to see the race. We waited for a long time for the launch as they kept postponing it. Snugli was totally awake and started checking out the inflatables. Since they were wet, we couldn't really let her play on them, but she had a good time nevertheless..




While we waited we also got to see the Meijer cake balloon getting blown up (later even fly) and several other balloons.






But I was in for a major disappointment as far as the race was concerned. The race was cancelled as the conditions were not really proper for balloon safety. I understood the dangers, but felt sorta bad. I felt as if we stayed over for nothing :((.

Well, on the bright side, there's always next year..

BTW we are heading on another of our trips this weekend, so you have a travelogue and many more photos to look forward to :-D.

Subsequent travel with a baby..

Part 2 of the trilogy :).

My in-laws came here in July end. And as I mentioned, travelling with in-laws was a different experience altogether. One advantage was that it was a rehash of places we had seen before, so there was really nothing for me to "see". So I could skip a few sights and breastfeed Snugli when she needed it without getting frustrated that I was missing something. Also I had help in Snugli's cerelac eating, since my MIL and I took turns having lunch ourselves and feeding her (which served as a pointer in our recent travel). But it was a bit inconvenient for my MIL and FIL as such since they are not really used to sitting in the car for hours and driving to places (we are used to traveling overnight in trains/buses in India, which is certainly not a very feasible option here in US). The other inconvenience was the food here and my FIL is a bit particular about his :-\. Yet we did manage to cover quite a bit and yup, it was lots easier :).

The first places we covered were obviously the nearest ones, so we finished of the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln (yup, that, KFC - the origin of Kentucky Fried Chicken and horses are the only things to see in Kentucky :-p) and Cincinnati. These were all within 2 hours range of Lexington, so they were quite alright. Thats when we decided to attempt Chicago which is more than 5 hours away. We planned the trip for the first weekend of August for 3 days.




The trip had its ups and downs (basically Snugli's eating and sleeping schedules weren't schedules anymore :-D), but it was mostly a success. We were able to cover all that we wanted to - the usual Sears tower, architecture river tour (on which only my inlaws went), the millennium park, the magnificent mile and the Field museum. The success encouraged us into planning a big one - the Pittsburgh and Niagara Falls trip which actually became the Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls and Dayton trip (so yup, it was so successful that we could add another place on the go :-D).

We planned a 4 day trip, most of it was driving, but everything went as planned. First we drove to Pittsburgh, where we saw the SriVenkateshwara temple.




We had lunch there and left to Niagara Falls. Night saw the illumination and spent the next day there. Again, we sent my inlaws on the maid of the mist and the cave of winds. Obviously things went according to plan :).




God! I love Niagara falls, they were as amazing as I remembered them :). We ofcourse saw the horseshoe falls next..




After seeing Niagara falls, we drove for 5 hours and reached Ohio to stop over for the night. Since we had the whole next day, decided impulsively to go to Dayton to see the Air force museum and the place where the Wright brothers first flew a successful flight (Sounds familiar? Thats because I wrote about it 2 years back!)




The trip was successful to some extent, but a few days later Snugli fell ill and that kinda put us off travel for sometime. So we sent my inlaws to Washington D.C in September (my MIL has some relatives there). But we did manage to go to Fort Knox and Louisville in September end; Fort Knox to see the famous bullion depository and Louisville for the Balloon festival. First we saw Patton museum in Fort Knox which is a museum of tanks..




Sri and I hadn't seen this museum before and it was really something interesting - full of tanks inside and out ranging from all wars. Next we drove to the Fort Knox bullion depository which stores all the gold of US. Visitors are not allowed and cars are not supposed to stop anywhere there, so we drove around and took photos..




Later went to the balloon festival. It was wonderful but still a few of the balloons the previous year were not on display and I really missed mom even more, since she was with me in 2007 :(. But Snugli did love gazing at the glowing balloons, so it was worth it :).










Later in October, we did visit a small reptile park nearby, which wasn't that big of a deal ;-). In November you know that we set off to Smokies, for I did tell you that. During thanksgiving weekend, we sent my inlaws to California to visit Sri's cousin and they were able to manage a Los Angeles trip from there. And I still haven't seen California :( (Sri are you listening?).

That was it, since December got too cold to go anywhere plus we had things to setup for Snugli's birthday party. My inlaws left to India shortly after that. Sri had some Christmas holidays and we didn't feel like spending them here in the chill. And it had been a long time since we saw some good fireworks. So we headed to Jacsonville, Florida. All that and more in the next post :).

Having a ball with balloons!

Its been sometime since I found out about the Balloon Festival that happens every year in Louisville, Kentucky. But we didn't really know about the whole thing until the start of this year. It was only after I saw a hot air balloon on a drive to Louisville, that I actually did some research and discovered the whole thing :). The festival known as the Adam Matthews Balloon Festival is supposedly the fifth largest hot air balloon festival in the US and is supposedly the largest in Kentucky. Well, I had never seen a hot air balloon up, close and personal before and no wonder I wanted to.

Somehow, on a coincidence, the festival dates were September 28th to 30th and mom was coming here on the 28th. We thought we will wait to see how she fares and then decide whether to go or not. I mean, jet lag is a big factor when you are travelling around the globe, that too for the first time! But surprisingly, she was the first to get all excited and was most willing to go :). Like daughter, like mom, I guess ;-). She looked pretty alright too, so we decided to go after all.

The festival consists of a race very early in the morning, later a balloon glow show in the evening followed by a firework show. The race was at 7:30 AM, so it didn't really make sense to go there so early and then wait the whole day. So we decided to attend just the evening glow show instead.

On saturday, 29th September 2007, at about 3:30 PM, we drove to Louisville. We reached the Bowman airfield where the festival is conducted, at about 4:30 PM. Strictly speaking, I was really disappointed at what I saw when we reached there. There were no hot-air balloons whatsoever and there were only some inflated structures for kids to play in. The traffic was also a bit less and there were not many people around. Since there was still time for the "evening" to go, we started roaming around the place.




The festival has no admission fee and there's only a parking fee of $7, so its really great if you have kids ;-). We saw the inflated structures and also got some freebies (some new chips from Flat Earth and some goodies from Meijer, who were the sponsors of the event). There was a nice concert going on, so after roaming around a bit, we spread a blanket and sat around enjoying the view. The trucks carrying the hot air balloons (non-inflated), started arriving one by one, but they started setting up everything only at around 7:30 PM. The reason being that the balloon glow show looks good only after sunset! But it was fun once they started the process :). The crowds also seemed to come out of nowhere and soon the field was full of people!

First, they setup the basket and the balloon quite far away from it.




Next they started spreading the balloons (they were all tied up and packed like a tent). It took several people to actually spread the balloon material.




Finally, they tilted the baskets and started the hot air flow which would blow the balloons up!













And so stood this balloon and so many more! It was fascinating!! People were struggling to balance the balloons. Some climbed into the basket to stabilize them while others tugged to and fro :-D. Some tied them securely to SUVs and trucks :).
We started our roaming again and took loads of pictures as usual ;-).




Some of the balloons had shapes. While this below one was shaped like a tree and had twigs with birds on them..




.., another one had a face, hands and legs!




I couldn't take a snap of yet another one which was shaped like a bear's face. But this one below was the best of them all - a huge cow balloon!!




It was obviously sponsored by a milk company ;-) :-D. All the balloons were sponsored and there were some well known names too, first being the Harley Davidson balloon.




Looks like the bottom's on fire, doesn't it? :-D. And then there was the Coca Cola balloon.




I even noticed a balloon sponsored by a funeral home! Anyways, the best thing about the whole glow show was that at about every 5 minutes, they'd have a countdown from 10 to 1. At the zeroeth second, all the balloons would light up (i.e switch on the gas and blow the hot air) simultaneously! It made for a wonderful sight, to say the least!




It was like nothing I've ever seen and an experience certainly worth repeating! Not to mention, mom and Sri considered it really well done too.

The glow show went on from about 8PM to almost 9 PM. Later they had the firework display which honestly speaking wasn't really upto standards (maybe I expect too much after the fireworks of the Louisville Air show). But well, the balloons compensated for everything else ;-). Obviously there was a traffic jam when we finally left the premises. It was 10:30 PM when we got home and mom though exhilarated, was tired.

And so ended another lovely day :).