"the winds have welcomed you with softness": in a hot air balloon!

Once upon a time, 20 yrs ago, in a land far far away, I was asked to make a list. The title of the list was "what I would do if I was not limited by time, money, ability and had the support of the my family." And #1 on my list (out of 69 items). . . was a hot air balloon. Well, specifically I wrote on that list that I wanted to own a hot air balloon. But I would have to suppose that the implicit goal in that desire on my 16 yr old wish list was to at least someday ride in one.

(maybe just ignore #2 and #3, by the way . . . I'm not sure I still want to do those - hehe)

And now I have!

It's something I've always wanted to do. Zac and I spent part of our honeymoon in Park City where they do a lot of hot air ballooning and I had wanted to do it then. But we didn't.
But then when I saw this Daily Deal deal a few months ago for more than half off for a balloon ride for 2, I just couldn't pass it up. We don't get away for our anniversary very often, or do much of anything really. We have years and years of dates, and gifts, and special events kind of built up. I figured this should count for at least a few of them. ;)

The morning in Park City was beautiful, cool and clear.

12 passengers fit in the basket, surprisingly

And up we go . . . We flew up to about 3000 ft at first and then just floated around a bit. The views of the surrounding areas were absolutely incredible.

It was a very calm day so we didn't cover much ground distance very quickly (at least it didn't appear so from that height). It hardly felt like we were moving much at all. The ascent was very smooth and it was so amazing to be up so high.

There you can see our sister balloon in the distance. This ballooning company sent up 2 balloons this day.At one point we were as high as 5000 ft above ground, as the pilot was looking for air currents to bring us somewhere we could land. Usually on a tourist flight, he said you only go up high once because it takes so much fuel, but we ended up going high 3 times so we got an extra bonus (but then he also joked about running out of fuel before we landed - haha).

After about an hour in the air, we landed gently on the ground. Celebrated our flight with champagne and/or orange juice.

And whoever caught the champagne cork got this little prize! Do you see? It's a balloon! :) (Zac caught it, or picked it up off the ground where it fell - but it still counted)

And then we got these cool certificates with The Balloonists Prayer printed on it which he had recited as part of our post-flight toast.
I love that. :)

(mostly coincidentally, this was also the 18th anniversary of the day we met, 18 yrs ago. So we've now almost known each other for longer than we ever lived not knowing each other. Kind of amazing. So this was a pretty cool way to celebrate that momentous occasion, don't you think? I think so.) :)