It’s been seven years since my last balloon flight. I’ve tried the past couple of years, but the weather hasn’t cooperated. The 2023 festival was a complete washout, and my flight Friday night last year was cancelled due to rain in the area, though I was able to see them launch Sunday morning.

When I booked the flight this year, the only time left was Saturday morning at 6AM. This means getting up just past 4 to be at the Festival grounds before 5:30, in time to pick up my boarding pass. Ugh. I am not a morning person, but I booked the ticket. As it turns out, I was fortunate.

I dithered a little deciding how to get up this year. I haven’t been riding much lately, and I’m finding time on the bike to be painful. The kicker was the feeling that I was fighting off a cold. I’m still not sure if I’m fighting something off or if it was just allergies or a reaction to a change in humidity, but the upshot was that I drove up in the Jeep Friday afternoon.

It quickly became obvious that they weren’t going to get the balloons off the ground Friday evening. It was way to windy to launch, and in fact, they had to modify The Glow Friday night — they couldn’t inflate the balloons in that wind, so they didn’t even attach the balloon envelopes, and instead, fired the burners bare.

The whole time I kept remembering Saturday of last year, which was similarly windy, and comforted myself with the thought that the wind died down that night, and hoped that it would die down in similar fashion this year.

Saturday Morning

I slept fitfully overnight, and woke up a minute or so before the alarm went off. The communications from the festival indicated we had to be there by 5:30 or risk losing our spot. I was at the festival grounds by 5, and noticed immediately that conditions were good. It was clear, and as I walked past, I could see the test balloon rising nearly straight up. The only concern was that once the test balloon got higher, it did start moving briskly. Fortunately, they soon announced it was a great day for ballooning, and the flights were on, and soon they started distributing the boarding passes. There would be seven of us flying with Darrek Daoust of Balloons of Vermont.

We headed down to the field where we met Darrek, who was just setting up the balloon. The basket was lying on its side, with the envelope strung out on the ground. A couple of us held the throat of the balloon open, and he started up a fan to start inflating the balloon.

It takes a while to inflate a balloon. It starts out with a small bubble of air that gradually gets bigger and rounder. It’s cool looking into the inflating balloon — it looks like a stained glass hall, with the sun shining through the fabric. Eventually it’s full enough that the pilot can start heating the air by blasting the burner into envelope. At first the heated air helps fill the balloon, and eventually the air becomes buoyant enough to start pulling the envelope off the ground and pulls the basket upright.

The balloon continued to develop lift, and we clambered in one by one. Finally, the last person was aboard, we got a couple of inches off the ground, Darrek’s crew walked us a little way away from the balloon next to us, he fired the burners again, and we were off.

Darrek proved to be pretty adept at reading the air currents. In general our track took us to the east, over the Ottauquechee River, where we saw several other balloons floating. We floated over the river a bit, and then he decided to take us lower, right over the surface of the water — close enough to see a snapping turtle in the water. Darrek’s chase crew was following us closely, and Emily Tyburski, a member of the crew, got a couple of pictures of us at we approached the water then rose above. There were a couple of other balloons in the area, and it was cool seeing their reflections in the water.

As we continued, Darrek made contact with the tower at Lebanon Airport. We were headed in that direction, and he hoped to land us there. We passed over a horse farm in Hartford, and past a couple of other balloons landing in a field. We passed by the interchange of Interstates 89 and 91, and the airport came into view.

At first it looked like we were headed right for a runway, but then the wind started taking us directly over some towers. So Darrek blasted the burners, sending us up higher into a different current over air and back over another runway. After getting permission to land on the runway, he dropped us gently down right onto the centerline. It was the smoothest landing of the four that I’ve experienced.

During the Day

After the flight, I headed back to the hotel for breakfast. I was booked for two nights, so I now had to figure out what to do with myself for the day. I probably should have attempted a nap, but I don’t nap well, so after a little down time, I took a look at some of the brochures in the hotel lobby. I decided to head to the American Precision Museum in Windsor, then head to Woodstock for a walk around and a quick tour of the Billings Farm Museum before heading back to Quechee for the sunset flights.

My Jeep has a removable “Freedom Panels” in its hard top, and this was the first time I tried driving with them out. It was really fun. The Precision Museum was about 20 minutes away from the hotel. Based in a former armory, it celebrates how the development of precision machining made modern manufacturing possible. It attempts to tie 19th century inventiveness to 21st century “innovation”, not always successfully, I thought.

From Windsor I took Route 12 north to Woodstock, where I spent some time walking through the shops, and over the covered bridge, From there I went to the Billings Farm museum which is devoted to 19th Century agriculture. There is a modern museum building there describing the history of the site, plus the restored farm manager’s home plus a working dairy farm. From there, I drove back to Quechee, stopping near the gorge to pick up an ice cream. By this point, it was 4 PM, and I wanted a quick visit to the Simon Pearce glass blowing shop. I ended parking at the festival, then walking to the shop from there. After watching some glass blowing, I headed back to the festival for some food and to watch the evening balloon launch.

Evening Launch

By the time I got back to the festival, got something to eat, walked back to the car to pick up my folding chair and get back to the field, the crews were starting to set up for the evening launch. They announced that four spots had opened up, and while I was briefly tempted to snag one, I decided not to be greedy. Instead, I had a great time watching the balloons take off.