"A" is for Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

My husband, Jim, and I traveled this great country of ours for SEVEN years in our RV. We saw many wonderful sights, visited famous and not so famous cities, and wandered through many a National Park. I have blogged through all our travels. I've stumbled upon the "Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2013". I decided to jump on board this crazy train and share with all of you places I have seen in my travels.

"A" = Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 

This is one of the best things we have ever done/gone to in all our travels. The Balloon Fiesta is held every October in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you ever, EVER have a chance to go there, by all means DO IT. You will not be disappointed. We attended for three straight days, although two of those days it meant to get up in the early, ugly hours of the morning, drive 20 miles from our campground to the launching site, just so we could get a parking space. But it was well worth it so that we wouldn't have to pay to take public transportation and be at the mercy of the schedule of when the bus left the park. On the third day, we arrived in the late afternoon before the evening crowd. It worked out well. In all three days I took nearly 1,000 photos! Here are only a handful!

Yes, the people were that close to the balloons!!

Just to give you an idea how large that one balloon is.......look at the size of the pick up truck AND how tiny the people look! There are two balloons there - the "airplane" and the another balloon behind it - not sure if it was the turtle or what.

One of the MANY special-shaped balloons. Love the expression on the lady bug's face. Kind of what mine would look like if I were in that balloon!!

"A" is also for Arlee Bird

Arlee, or "Lee", is the founder of the A-Z Challenge. Thank you for this great opportunity for bloggers to get together and meet other bloggers!

These are the hosts of the challenge:

Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/

Damyanti Biswas at Amlokiblogs  http://amloki.blogspot.com/
Alex J. Cavanaugh http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/
Tina Downey at Life is Good  http://kmdlifeisgood.blogspot.com/
DL Hammons at Cruising Altitude 2.0  http://dlcruisingaltitude.blogspot.com/
Jeremy Hawkins at Retro-Zombie  http://izombielover.blogspot.com/
Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse  http://thewarriormuse.blogspot.com/
Matthew MacNish at The QQQE  http://theqqqe.blogspot.com/
Konstanz Silverbow at No Thought 2 Small http://nothoughts2small.blogspot.com/

Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs http://stephentremp.wordpress.com/

Livia Peterson at Leave it to Livia  http://leaveittolivia.blogspot.com/
L. Diane Wolfe at Spunk on a Stick’s Tips  http://circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com/
Nicole at The Madlab Post  http://www.madlabpost.com/

To view some of the over 1500 other participants in "Blogging from A-Z Challenge", please click here.