Hot Air Balloon Ride
Aug. 13th, 2021 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
We took a sunset trip with Seattle Ballooning, who fly out of the Auburn area. The balloon launched from a small airfield on a gorgeous evening.
The balloon basket was taken off the trailer behind the van and the propane burners were tested.
One hundred feet of balloon was laid out over the grass...
... and attached to the sideways basket.
The rest of the set-up process and video from the flight itself are in this video on youtube. There's no point embedding it here as it won't display anyway - youtube have stopped video embedding because they can't inflict adverts on you that way :-(
The video shows a lot of the amazing views as we flew up around 5000 feet, then dropped lower to brush the treetops over the Green River, and finally landed in a farming area between Auburn and Enumclaw.
A second balloon from the same company was being inflated in the next field as we took off.
View across one of many little local lakes to Mount Rainier. The mountain's looking pretty bare this year, not much snow on top.
Many passenger jets fly near Rainier as they make their approach to Seatac.
Our companion balloon, with Puget Sound and the Olympics behind.
It's really hard to show in a photo just how big Rainier is. It makes the other mountains around it look like tiny little foothills, but they're not. The time it really gets to you is flying out of Seatac on an overcast day, when the plane finally rises up out of the clouds, and there's nothing but a flat expanse of grey below you. And the mountain - that's still there with you, rising all the way up through the cloud layer.
Our companion balloon, flying low over the green River.
When you fly low over someone's house in a balloon, they come out to wave and photograph you back.
We weren't the only people thinking it was a beautiful evening to fly - several powered parachutists were buzzing around too.
It was really interesting to see how all the ballon set-up was done, and it's quite incredible how much fine control a good pilot has over something that large which is mainly at the mercy of the wind!
The balloon basket was taken off the trailer behind the van and the propane burners were tested.
One hundred feet of balloon was laid out over the grass...
... and attached to the sideways basket.
The rest of the set-up process and video from the flight itself are in this video on youtube. There's no point embedding it here as it won't display anyway - youtube have stopped video embedding because they can't inflict adverts on you that way :-(
The video shows a lot of the amazing views as we flew up around 5000 feet, then dropped lower to brush the treetops over the Green River, and finally landed in a farming area between Auburn and Enumclaw.
A second balloon from the same company was being inflated in the next field as we took off.
View across one of many little local lakes to Mount Rainier. The mountain's looking pretty bare this year, not much snow on top.
Many passenger jets fly near Rainier as they make their approach to Seatac.
Our companion balloon, with Puget Sound and the Olympics behind.
It's really hard to show in a photo just how big Rainier is. It makes the other mountains around it look like tiny little foothills, but they're not. The time it really gets to you is flying out of Seatac on an overcast day, when the plane finally rises up out of the clouds, and there's nothing but a flat expanse of grey below you. And the mountain - that's still there with you, rising all the way up through the cloud layer.
Our companion balloon, flying low over the green River.
When you fly low over someone's house in a balloon, they come out to wave and photograph you back.
We weren't the only people thinking it was a beautiful evening to fly - several powered parachutists were buzzing around too.
It was really interesting to see how all the ballon set-up was done, and it's quite incredible how much fine control a good pilot has over something that large which is mainly at the mercy of the wind!
no subject
Date: 2021-08-15 02:26 pm (UTC)Probably for the best. I don't think people with bad knees would appreciate the landing.
They do two flight times a day here, one immediately after sunrise and one in the 90 mins before sunset. Apparently winds are lighter and more predictable at those times than in the middle of the day. The balloons that used to fly near mum's house we always saw towards sunset (I was rarely up right after sunrise in summer to know!)