Sunday October 22nd 2017

After I woke up early this morning to a beautiful sunrise, I decided to head over to the Balloon Festival for the morning ascension. The festival grounds are on the west side of the Las Vegas valley. My RV site is on the east side of the valley. As the crow flies it’s about 15 miles, but it is a lot longer by road. If I stayed on surface streets it would be eighteen miles and who knows how long with traffic. The highways are much less direct but more reliable time wise. It drove close to thirty miles to get to the festival site.

The rising sun was a real issue as I drove to the festival. It was never directly in front of my direction of travel, but my side and rear windows were dirty so the glare was terrible. As I approached the west side of the valley I could see six hot air balloons in the sky. They were close enough to the ground that I considered the possibility they were tethered, but as I got closer they continued to climb. They were heading for the mountains on the west side of the valley so they needed to gain significant altitude to continue in a westerly direction. Once I got off the highway it was next to impossible to see the balloons. I was late for the actual ascension. The only thing left to see at the festival was a bunch of carnival rides, but those didn’t seem to be alive before 8am in the morning.

It turns out I had my best view of the balloons from the highway. There were six or seven balloons of different colors. The only way I could get a better view would be to join the line of cars following the ground crews that were chasing the balloons. That didn’t seem terribly safe so I headed back to camp.

A desert rose? Actually it is an ordinary hybrid tea rose that is kept well watered.

I got back to camp around ten after stopping for breakfast. The Sunday football games were just getting started. I settled in front of the TV for a day of reading and watching football. Most of my watching was on outside TV sitting under the awning in the mid 80s temperature with a gently breeze. It was a great day.