Petrified Forest

 we were able to quickly pack up our trailer and headed out of Albuquerque. As we left, we could see the balloons off in the distance. It was a nice sendoff. We drove to A loves where we emptied our gray water. The drive to the petrified forest was a beautiful drive as The scenery was quite interesting. It’s a lot of spacious fields and sagebrush and lots of red canyons. The petrified forest is a very interesting national park. It’s a 28 mile drive and there are three sections. We drove from the north to the south; The top section is red, the middle is blue and purple, and the bottom is mostly blue. There are 12 Mark spots along the way and we got them out at each of them. Can’t say that I had a favorite spot as they were all very interesting, it’s also called the painted desert here, especially at the top. Where are there are so many layers of different colors as you drive south. You see more of the petrified forest with lots of logs laying around the park has been very well preserved as there were many photos from 100 years ago compared to today and you could see that the landmarks were still the same . 

Ratcheese - Hot Air Balloon Ride

 

It looked to be a beautiful day and Kiko planned to go up. We were pleasantly surprised when Keith asked if Scotty and I wanted to go up with him today, and of course the answer was yes.  It is not at all a guarantee that you will go up when you sign up for balloon crew so we felt lucky! We are in plot V6, which means we are one of the later balloons to take off. We ready the balloon for takeoff and then it was time to jump into the gondola. It’s just an amazing experience to lift up above the world and see the city below to me. It’s not a scary experience at all, which is surprising to me. We floated for maybe 40 minutes and took lots of photos and enjoyed the quiet float up in the clouds. Kiko picked out a road for a landing spot and there happen to be another crew down below. These gentlemen helped pull the basket down and then took us over onto the road away from the cactus infested field. It was only about four minutes until Keith showed up with our regular Rat Cheese crew. Kiko effortlessly landed the gondola onto the bed of the truck, which seems like a stroke of genius. It’s hard work lifting the gondola up onto the bed. We all loaded into two trucks and headed back to the fiesta field and once again enjoyed the company of these newly made friends.

Albuquerque Balloon Festival

 Once again we got up about 345 and left the trailer at 4:15. We parked at the trailhead and road 3 miles into the park Keith with the Chase crew said we could meet him and drive in but it just seems so easy to ride our bikes that we will probably continue to do this. A new feature is a drone show in the morning, which is really nice. It is produced by the Sandia Casino and resorts, but it is amazing to see all these little drones. Create pictures in the sky. The glow went off seamlessly and that is a beautiful sight to see  Balloons started to launch and then we got to roll out Rat Cheese. It’s a much larger balloon than the Smurf balloon We did in 2019.  The pilot is Kiko who is from Brazil and his wife is Sue. There are four other Brazilian teams, but they will not all be launching their balloons as some are experimental. Keith went up in the balloon with Kiko and we went in the truck to chase after it. It land With several other balloons, not far from the fiesta Field. When we got back to Chrissy’s to lunch at a restaurant called The range. spot there were lots of people in there. The walls are led with Arts so I enjoyed that. I had spinach enchiladas and Scotty has pork tenderloin sandwich. We each had a heavy bites and beer. We went back to Chrissy‘s for just a little while before we hooked up our trailer and went over to the Elks Lodge. we are in the lot and it seems to be an ideal spot to camp. It should make for an interesting week. 

Albuquerque Balloon Festival

 Today we got up at four and headed to downtown Albuquerque. We parked our bikes at a trailhead and rode the bike trail about 3 miles into the fiesta field we went to our lot V6 and waited for almost an hour for the rest of the team to show up. We were also able to see the drone show as we came into the park and then when daylight came We watched a plane show overhead. Our balloon pilot is Kiko from Brazil And his balloon is called rat cheese. There are four other balloons there from Brazil and they appear to work closely. Two areas, one is a Candy house. And the fourth is Cogsworth from beauty and the beast. The flag stayed yellow for quite a while and when it finally turned green the crowds erupted and cheers. The standard balloons went up, but the shape balloons did not because they are bigger and it makes them harder to go up and also to land. I made the best of my time by wandering around taking some photos which is not hard to do at the fiesta Scotty hung around the balloons and helped unroll Cogsworth as they were going to do a static display, but never did. 

Albuquerque BalloonFiesta

 We drove about three hours from Ute to Albuquerque and arrived at Chrissy’s house. We managed to park the trailer in her side lot and it fit perfectly. after settling in, we drove down to the fiesta field and registered for Chase crew. We requested an international team and we’re assigned to a Brazilian team. we briefly walked around the field and then checked out the bike path for tomorrow. On the way home, we stopped at Filiberto’s Mexican fast food restaurant and picked up dinner for the three of us. Caught up with Chrissy and then made for an early bedtime because we knew we had to get up early the next day.

Camping - Ute State Park

We drove across Texas today which is a long desolate state scrubby scenery. Two possible highlights were henge and pens filled with thousands of cows.  We got to Logan New Mexico to Ute state park. There are four sections to the park and we stayed in the Yucca section. It wasn’t that as we had a view of a lake my only disappointment was that I walked too late down to the edge of the park to see the sunset, what I did see it was beautiful, the park is in the middle of a desert, very little trees, lots of scrub brush and we were able to see the water in the dam from our site. The bathrooms were spacious and clean. The stars at night though were absolutely beautiful. We had a nice dinner of pork chops and salad. Scotty went to bed early and I stayed up to watch a few episodes of SVU. Camping life sure is nice.

Camping - Oklahoma City

 We got to Oklahoma City and parked at lively beer Works which is in the middle of the city. It seems like an interesting spot and we set up our chairs and noticed many homeless people walking in the area. Before we left on a bike ride, we decided to lock everything up and not leave anything out side. We had a great bike ride and saw some many beautiful spots of the city. We rode along a paved bike trail and headed to the downtown botanical Garden. We saw lots and lots of pumpkins as they were setting up for a pumpkin festival. From there we rode down to the Bricktown canal path which is a beautiful area with many restaurants and shops this canal leads down to the Oklahoma river and our bike path also led to the river. We found a drive-through Greek restaurant just two blocks from our trailer and drove up to the window on our bikes to order. I think we made the owners day when we drove up on our bikes and we had a very nice conversation about our travels from there we headed over to live via Work and each ordered fest beer which was very very good along with our gyros. We headed back out to the trailer it was getting dark and we laid down in bed. We kept hearing people go by the trailer and we had noticed earlier that there was a homeless mission. Just a block away from us we felt increasingly uncomfortable and decided to look for a new place for the night. A few miles away we found a Walmart but because of barriers could not get our trailer into their parking lot. So we headed to a Home Depot and called the store and they said it would be fine if we park there we park by Jersey Mike’s because lines were not being painted there, there was traffic nearby but we promptly fell asleep until 2 o’clock when a security guard knocked on our door and told us we had to move. After explaining that we had called the owner he said it was his job to have people move so at 2 o’clock in the morning we headed west and found another Walmart just outside the city. We felt encouraged as we saw about six other trailers parked in their parking lot, for the third time that night we later heads down to go to sleep. This was our first time Boondocking, and hopefully if we do it again, it will go smoother than this.