Saturday, September 19, we got up early and drove over to White Sands National Monument for the White Sands Balloon Festival. Everyone knows about the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival. That festival will take place starting October 13 in Albuquerque. It is the granddaddy of balloon festivals, and the largest in the world. But, any town in New Mexico that aspires to be a town (not a wide spot in the road) has a balloon festival. At last count, there are 13 in the state. Las Cruces has one (in January) that we have visited in the past.
White Sands NM is a 70 square mile sand dune field of pure white gypsum sand. The monument sits in the Tularosa Basin. The entrance is about 45 miles east of Las Cruces, and 15 miles west of Alamagordo. The monument is in the White Sands Missile Range. The range is a historic testing grounds for the military that stretches over 80 miles (north to south) in the center of New Mexico. At the north end of the range is Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb was detonated in July 1945. Just East of Las Cruces is the launch facility where Wherner Von Braun and other captured German rocket scientist were brought a the end of the war. It was there that the Army launched the captured V2 rockets, and developed some of the first American military rockets. It also has an emergency landing strip for the space shuttle that was used once in 1982.
Anyway, the monument is a beatutiful place and watching multi-colored hot-air balloons launching and flying there sounded interesting. Hot-air balloon launches, by necessity, happen in the early morning. They need that cool morning air to fly. So, we left the house around 5:00 AM to get to White Sands and get settled before the 7:00 AM scheduled launch time. We ran into a little light rain on the way over, and the morning dawned cloudy. But, by 9:00 AM the clouds had mostly burned away. Most hot-air balloon flights are only an hour or less. So, by 10:00 AM most of the balloons were down. While Albuquerque has a huge number of balloons participating, these smaller festivals are more fun for spectators. First, they are usually free (this one cost the Monument entrance fee, $3.) and you can really get close to the balloons, talk with pilots and crews, and in many cases volunteer to help with the launch and recovery. The reward for volunteering is the prospect of a free balloon flight.
I took over 130 photos while we were there. I managed to pare it down to about 30 photos in my album. Click on this photo for a link to the photo album.
