Balloon Race

On Saturday Alyce had her second trip to the balloon race.  Last year we attended the event and Alyce enjoyed herself.  This year she liked it even more.  For the past week and maybe longer Alyce has been all about hot air balloons.  This all started when a balloon flew over Gram's and PaPa's house since then it has been "ride in hot air balloon", "go see hot air balloon"?  When the day finally came Alyce was giddy.

We arrived at the race about half an hour before the balloons started so Mom, Grams, and I took Alyce to ride the ponies where Alyce did a very good job of waiting her turn.  Alyce had a great time on her pony.  I had every intention of standing next to her on the pony but I didn't get a chance to get inside the ring before the worker picked her up and put her on a pony.  Alyce didn't seem to have a problem with me not being next to her as she was fixated on her pony.

After the pony ride we look around and see that the balloons started inflating.  Our location this year was really cool because we were maybe 20 feet away from a balloon crew and got to see how a balloon is inflated.  First they use a gas powered fan to fill up the empty balloon and this only fills up the balloon partially.  Once the balloon is half full they use a propane burner to shoot some hot air into the balloon.  It doesn't take a lot of hot air to make a balloon rise.  I'd say after 5 seconds of fire the balloon was already lifting off the ground.  It still took a lot of additional heat to generate enough lift to actually pick people off the ground.  Alyce wasn't a big fan of the propane torches.  At one point she hid behind me when they were shooting flame and making lots of noise.

Not counting the balloons inflating Alyce seemed to enjoy them going up into the sky.  While she was on my shoulders we both waved bye to the balloons as they took off and flew away.