The Parade route when through the town and around the square. Many of the Baskets for the Balloons were involved in one way or another. All operational,complete with hot air and big fireballs erupted when they were primed. I got some pretty good pictures of Fireballs!
They had a pretty good crowd, and most of them stayed around the square for their arts and crafts show, but we had to drove up to Des Moines so we left right away. My eldest son, wife and two Grandbabies met us at the Flyin' J Truckstop, where we had lunch and an impromptu
"Tailgate" Birthday party for Shayne, their daughter turning "one"!
It wasn't a great meal, but we all had a pretty good visit and the kids got a good stretch. We got to watch Shayne with her presents, shes got 2 teeth and walking already. They had 9 more hours in the vehicle after they left us before they got
to Adrian Michigan. The they all travel back across MI. to Silver Lake on the Shores of lake Michigan where they will vacation at the place where they got married 5 years ago. It's hard to believe it's been that long.....time flys when you're having fun. After we left them, we traveled back down to Indianola and attempted to go out to the staging area where the Balloon Festival is held. We got in a line of cars, bumper to bumper traffic miles and miles long!
I chickened out and turned into a park across the highway, where a few people had begun to gather. That was more than 2 hours before the Assention. The solid traffic kept up until way after the balloons took flight and were still going in the gate, backed up clear into town, after we left! Glad we didn't get in the middle of that. I never realized it would be that big of an event. We were able to see the lift offs and flights just fine from where we sat. At one point there were over 30 huge balloons in the sky at the same time. They were lifting off and coming down more than a mile away! I am convinced that I need a different camera and lots better lenses than my Easy Share. Maybe will start looking into that and I may have to take a class or two. I may look into classes when we get to Arizona this winter. I am still having issues with E Mail. I can receive through my Office Outlook program, but I can't send. The tech support guy said it was my providers fault, and they said it was the Alltel people. Hope I get it figured out soon. At least I can connect to the net and send stuff through my Facebook and post here. I have a Yahoo mail that I don't use much, but may have to start if this doesn't get fixed. Just can't figure out why all of a sudden this happens, and then everybody blames everybody else! Bah Humbug anyway. I think it all has to do with the merge of Alltel and Verizon. Tomorrow we will be on the road again. Not going too far, just to Mount Pleasant, in the far southeast corner of Iowa. Our last little touring stop and farewell to this state. The Casino hasn't been yielding any money this time, but we've had a very inexpensive stay and fun anyway. Today was laundry day at the local laundramat in Osceola. Having done that, I will get busy fixing our evening meal and stowing stuff away, so I don't have that much to do in the morning. We had a rain storm in the night, and we also had some hail, but no damage that I can see...was too scared to get up and look! There's thunderstorms forcast for tonight too...but just like yesterday...there's nothing on the map, so it must blow up late at night.
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