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RSSHot Air Ballooning!
Oct 31
Entertainment, Meta hot air ballooning wine country sonoma Comments
We went hot air ballooning over wine country for our anniversary. I suppose I hadn’t really considered it before, but hot air balloons are quite temperamental — 
they succumb to the slightest changes in pressure, temperature and weather. Our first scheduled outing was supposed to be in September, but it was postponed due to rain. We finally got a chance to go out last Sunday, and it was a really marvelous, unique experience.
The company we went flying with was quite a class act — good to know, since we’ve had relatives warning us about all the balloon crashes in the news lately. They made sure that we were very involved in the setup process, and this first picture you see is me holding a side of the balloon as we use a FAN to inflate it. Yes, a fan. (Ballooning, at least the way we did it, is completely back to basics: you attach the basket, blow up the balloon and lift off into the air.) Once the balloon got sufficiently full, our pilot fired propane jets into the balloon interior to heat up the air.
Once you get it hot enough, the enormous balloon tips up, as you can see in the background with the other balloon in our group. After that you all have to scramble into the basket as it strains to pull away from the earth, and as soon you get in they let go and you’re OFF!
That first liftoff was quite breathtaking. The rest of the journey took less than an hour. We floated over the farms and fields of beautiful Sonoma County, watching the fog burn off in the emerging sunlight. 
It’s very peaceful up there, apart from the occasional firing of the jets, and yes — it is, in fact, quite romantic.
As I mentioned, when ballooning you’re completely at the mercy of the elements. The only way to "steer" the balloon is by adjusting the height through the controlled heating and cooling of the air inside. Depending on how high you are, different crosswinds will propel you in different directions.
We stayed low for the majority of the flight, skimming over vineyards and trees with leaves changing color. According to the pilot, October is the best month of the year for ballooning. We tried to end the journey with a little high flying, but there wasn’t enough wind up there so we moved on to looking for a landing spot.
We were able to find a yard to land in and helped take down the balloon, then were whisked off to a pleasant champagne brunch on the grounds of the Kendall Jackson winery. All in all something everybody should try at least once.
Here’s my favorite photo from the journey — this is the type of picture you can only get from a hot air balloon!
I think my favorite part about the ballooning experience was the unpredictability of it — every balloon ride is different, because the ever-changing conditions require you to make decisions on the spot. If we had been able to find a strong wind way up high, we could have ridden it back to the field we started from. But we didn’t, so we had to float around looking for a place to land. Ballooning is the opposite of most of the tourism industry, since there is no linear path that they take you through — it’s probably the least touristy thing you could ever do in wine country.
Unfortunately I shaved off my awesome 70s mustache and sideburns that I had been sporting for Halloween the night before. It would have been an excellent "Ballooning ‘Stache" – I’ll have to post some pictures of it sometime. :-)