Dorothy: There's no place like home, there's no place like home!

We have had a great weekend thus far! On Friday we had the day off together and took the opportunity to hike on the Air Force Academy base. They have beautiful paths and hikes to go on. The path we took went to a reservoir but after hiking two hours I wanted to head back! Wrigley loved every minute and didn't get tired while we were hiking.

Here we are in our AF hats!

Among other events of the weekend we were planning on going to the 32nd annual Balloon Classic. A yearly event where about 65 air balloons all take off near a lake together in the Springs. The event happens every morning during Labor Day weekend and in the evenings they do a balloon glow where they light up a ton of balloons on the ground.
David's boss let his office know her dad flies one of the balloons and we could meet up with them and maybe help with chasing the balloon when they were going to land. We were SO blessed by her dad Jim who actually took us up in the air!!! We were able to be with him in the balloon for about an hour, it was amazing.

Since there are so many balloons they take flight in waves. The first wave gets their balloons blown up and then take off. Sometimes it gets a little crowded!

Here I am helping pull the balloon out as it blows up.

1. Get in the balloon as it's being blown up and take a picture with the two Captains!
Actually Jim (balloon captain!) is retired AF and flew B-66's in Vietnam. He is having a reunion with AF buddies this coming weekend and about 4 of them were in town for this event.

2. You are told you get to ride and you should get in the basket!

Funny thing, we saw the balloon that was flying over our house a few weeks ago in this post! Here it is above.

Here is part of the first wave of balloons getting ready to take flight.

Part of this festival the balloons can touch the lake so as we were touching the lake I took another picture of other balloons getting ready to launch.
The funny looking balloon is actually the Noah's Ark balloon.

We were able to catch the wind just right and touched the water, went very high and went down and touched the water again. The crowd loves it and cheers whenever the baskets dunk in the water! We just had a blast doing this.

From the other direction the balloons go with the wind. There is no way to direct the balloon except for up and down. Landing can be very interesting.

After the flight we tailgated with the crew. There was a ceremony for first-time fliers (us!) where they told us a story of how hot air ballooning started. Then, we were told to get on our knees and drink champagne out of a paper cup without our hands. Well, while we were bending over to get our drinks with our teeth, people behind us poured champagne over our heads!!! It was a fun way to end a great morning.