Foley's Annual Hot Air Balloon Disaster

On Saturday morning - and by morning, I am talking about before sunrise - I met my friend, Bridget, at her house in Perdido Key in the convertible so that we could drive out to Foley, Alabama. The drive is quite pretty during the day, but at 4 am it is still rather dark and personally, I am not one to get too excited about views that early.

The purpose of our trip was to check out the Foley Annual Hot Air Balloon Show. It is usually on the Father's D hours
However, the Pelican had a horribly confused source of information, becauseay weekend and lasts from the Friday until the Sunday. Bridget had read about it in the Pelican - a free community paper.

It sounded really exciting, so I volunteered to drive us there in the convertible. The paper suggested arriving there (an hour's drive) two at sunrise the only thing that went up is the temperature and the sun. We then saw the stage and tent in the area where the vendors would be setting up later on filling with people and heard a microphone so we decided to venture over prior to sunrise, which we did. The balloons were said to take off at sunrise.
there. They were having a rather lengthy pilot's meeting.

What we found out that time (around 6 am) was that the hot air balloons were scheduled to take off at 6:30, but not from where we were. They were to take off elsewhere and then land around where we were. They were only taking off from the Foley Soccer Field at 6 pm.

I overheard the speaker advising the balloonists and their crews not to land in the field behind where we were parked as he flies over there frequently and has never seen bigger snakes in his life. My first thought was my car was parked close to gigantic snakes.

This was already rather disappointing to us - and I am sure scores others. We were not the only people that had relied on the Pelican's misinformation.

At this point I was a little aggravated that we - along with others - trusted the information of the Pelican as we were all aware that for the balloons to take off at 6:30 from another location would be pretty impossible. Not only would they have to drive out to the location, but they would have to set up AND still inflate the balloons. Clearly, we were going to wait a while longer.

Finally! At around 7:30 we saw a black dot in the sky. A balloon finally started to float closer to us. Bridget was correct in stating that hot air balloons were just magical. They were visible to us, but on our cameras they only picked up as specks of dust on the lens.

Sadly, the wind had picked up and we only got to see three balloons. A balloonist even rolled his balloon trying to take off, which is reportedly dangerous.

The magic was there, though, and even though we did not manage to see 48 balloons floating in the sky, I could imagine the beauty of it just based on the three that I did get to see.

The next item on my "To Do Before I Die" List is to go for a Hot Air Balloon ride. Until then, I will just dream about the magic of floating in a wicker basket attached to a ginormous multi-coloured balloon, all the while soundly asleep until well past sunrise.