Our day at the festival started out with a semi-private balloon ride over the Temecula Valley. It was a cool but beautiful morning. After arriving at the check in grounds we loaded into trucks and were driven away from Lake Skinner and down into the wineries. Our pilot stopped at several sites and released a helium balloon to check for wind direction and speed. Eventually we found a spot to unload and start our adventure.
I've always wondered how they inflate those things so I made sure to post some pictures of that part so that you guys can see as well. I got to volunteer to help hold the opening upright! ...There was a lot of wind from that industrial sized/strength fan. After we loaded into the basket a couple blasts of the flame and up we went. Take off was so smooth, quiet, and exciting. It's all physics!!! ...I think. Hot air rises?
Our pilot wasn't very chatty but we asked lots of questions. For instance.
1. Did you know that you can purchase your own hot air balloon for around $65,000
2. If you own your own hot air balloon you can take off whenever and wherever you want, no air traffic controller needed
3. Hot air balloons can collide mid air, but nothing really happens... The balloons squish, the baskets get close, people wave, and eventually separate.
Anyways, that's enough balloon trivia. We landed after a mere 45 minutes in the air, it was such a great experience though! Not sure I would ever do it again though, I thought for the price and time spent in the air... a little unbalanced. We were initially told to allow 3-4 hours for our time spent ballooning but were back on the ground around 8:00 am (forgot to mention that we got there at 6:00 am!)
I had also planned a lunch food/wine paring at the festival but that didn't start until 11:00am. So, now we faced a dilemma, what are we going to do for 3 hours? None of the booths were open yet so we walked around and watched people set up and eventually got some breakfast. In doing so, we got sucked into attending a timeshare meeting... Yes, this will turn into it's own post for sure!
So our food and wine paring started out well... but didn't end as well as we had hoped. Instead of 3 full courses and 3 wine parings we had 2 mini-taste sized courses and 2 wine parings. Uhhh, not sure if I would do that part again either. Later as we used our complimentary wine tasting tickets - I think this is the part we had the most fun, we walked around, tasted wine, and eventually just sat down on the grass and listened to the live music.
Nevertheless, it was a great day spent in each others company!
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