Marvel in awe, then realize how cool your home isn’t.
Some photoshopping was done, but the result is quite striking.
Striking indeed. That captures the feeling of a misty morning very evocatively. I like!
Very nice!
It really reminds me of the streetlight outside my window–very evocative.
Very cool…the balloons are higher than the bird. It doesn’t even look real.
Is the black blob in the foregound the bird? Why are so many balloons apparently crashing into the trees?
That’s beautiful.
Hey Mr Bus Guy, check it out, I found your picture from when you were little! 
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Wow, that balloon photograph is stunning. Thanks for sharing.
You have too many trees near your home. I hate trees!
I grew up in ABQ and one thing I really miss is the Ballon Fiesta*. Ballons all over th place. The mass ascentions are something that I really miss. Five or six hundred ballons launching at once. Simply amazing.
That is a great picutre, reminds me a lot of growing up. Every year when the fiesta started I’d walk to school and see similar scenes, though not so many trees as I didn’t live in the valley.
Slee
*For Don’t Ask.
In point of fact, there are very few trees near my home.
Looks almost more like a painting than a photo. Purty.
OK, can someone answer something I have been wondering for a while?
At these balloon fests, with hundreds of balloons, how do they keep them from crashing into each other?
Pterodactyl.
Yes, it’s lovely. Now I’m homesick.
**bouv ** they stake all the balloons a fair distance apart, and they are in assigned sections that rise one at a time. Albuquerque, at least, has a “box” effect that blows all the balloons in a rectangle pattern around the city. When they get bored or whatever, they pick an empty field or parking lot and set down. That was always the coolest part for me as a kid; I loved the mass ascensions, but you never knew when you’d be driving down the road an have a balloon set down right beside you.
I hope that heaven is half as nice. That is really breath-taking! Thanks!
I have that picture now as my backdrop.
Thanks!
And if they land on your property, you get champagne (OJ for the kiddies).
OK, I want witnesses on this for the next time New Mexico is characterized as hot flat dry & treeless!
Nice pic, Derleth!
I’ve never been to New Mexico, but I have been to Arizona. Driving from Tuscon to Flagstaff via Phoenix is a real revelation. (You go from cacti-and-sage desert to pine tree mountains in the space of less than a full day’s drive.) There isn’t that much variability in Montana, even if the desert was greener than the high plains back home.
No problem. 