Hot Air Balloon Ride

Even though Lucy had stayed the night at my parents' on Friday night, Todd & I still had to get up early on Saturday morning to drive to Marysville to get there by 7:00 AM for our hot air balloon ride.  Last year, Todd & I put together a bucket list of places we want to visit as well as experiences we want to do and taking a hot air balloon ride was on our list.  Todd had tried to plan in for my birthday back in May but unfortunately, it rained the morning we were supposed to do it so it was cancelled and he rescheduled it for our anniversary.  Luckily, we had absolutely perfect weather on Saturday (although it was a bit chilly that morning) and our ride went off without a hitch.

We arrived and were surprised to see 3 hot air balloons getting set up.  Todd works with the guy who was flying our hot air balloon (apparently it's a side hobby/business of his) and had a couple other people come out as well to fly their balloons.  It was pretty cool to actually see the balloons get set up and before I knew it, we were inside and taking off.  We left from a field right next to the Honda Marysville dealership and flew over Marysville for almost an hour before landing in someone's backyard.  Literally, our chaser had to knock on the door and ask the homeowner if we could land in the backyard.  Now granted, this backyard was a couple acres but I never realized that they just landed in random peoples' backyards.  

Unloading the basket and balloon from the van

Our balloon before getting it set up

Excited for our ride!

The 1st of 3 balloons to go up (we were the 3rd one)

The 2nd balloon

All 3 balloons (you can see the 1st one way up in the sky in the background)

Still getting set up

Almost ready!

About to get in the basket and take off

The basket was much smaller than I thought it would be...we were in there pretty close!

Right before taking off

And we're off!  That's our chaser down on the ground, we were in constant contact with him via a walkie and he met us where we landed

The field next to Honda Marysville where we took off from

Getting up even higher

You can just barely see downtown Columbus in the distance

More views of Marysville

Todd & I

You can see the other 2 balloons ahead of us

Another one of us

That's the backyard we landed in along with the 2nd balloon

Starting to come down for our landing

Balloon reflection in a pond

Balloon shadow right before landing

Taking the balloons down

It was a really awesome experience and fun morning and I'm glad that Todd & I were able to cross something off our bucket list for our anniversary.  Maybe one of these years we'll get to cross off staying in an over water bungalow in Fiji for our anniversary!