SOME EARLY BALLOONS

The Havasu Island Balloon Festival starts this morning, but we got a bit of a preview yesterday afternoon. Patty was outside when she yelled at me to "come take a look". There were a total of 6 hot air balloons in the air, and a couple of them were pretty close to our house. What a perfect opportunity to give my new Nikon a try. Even though the sun was setting over the lake, and these lighter than air objects were almost directly in front of the sun, the camera on the auto setting seems to make the adjustment pretty well. With the old Kodak camera, these photos would not have been nearly as viewable.

Before the balloons were airborne, I took the Yamaha scooter downtown to pick up a passing light for the Harley. When Bob & Diana went with us for a motorcycle ride down to Parker a couple of weeks ago, one of the two front lights quit working. Yep, the new light is made in you know where!

While downtown, I cruised out onto the island, and checked out all of the activity at the Nautical Resort & golf course where the festival is headquartered. It looked like a human beehive, with lots of people scurrying all over the place. Directly across the road from the Nautical, the gate was open onto the old airport runway which will be used as one of the several temporary island parking lots. Due to a locked gate, I had never been able to check out what was the first airport in Lake Havasu City. Back in the 1960's and 70's, the founder of the town, Robert McCulloch would fly people into the new town for free, and he sold many of the lots with that marketing tool. With the new residential development on the island, only part of that original runway is still in existence.

The weather forecast through Saturday is for temps in the upper 60's - low 70's, with light winds under 10mph. Should be pretty good conditions for a morning launch of 10 times as many balloons as we saw yesterday afternoon. With the sun peaking over the eastern mountains, should make for some spectacular pictures!