It all started with a wedding gift.

Given my love of hot air balloons, my bridesmaid Julie and my college golf coach Tracy (the two ladies on the right) got together and decided that the perfect wedding gift would be a hot air balloon ride. Now for those of you who follow this blog, I’m sure you know I have a fascination with hot air balloons, I simply love them! But the other important part to the story is that I have a very real fear of heights.

So when The Renaissance Man and I opened Julie and Tracy’s wedding gift, at first I was super excited, and then I was overwhelmed with the fact that I would have to go on a hot air balloon ride.

Panic and my irrational fear of impending doom took over, and I put off thinking about the hot air balloon ride for a solid eleven months. But the thing about this gift certificate was that it had to be used in 2014, and by late August the ballooning window was starting to dwindle. So on a whim, I called and made a reservation with Portland Rose Balloons for September 21st. I decided the balloon ride would be part of our One Year Anniversary Celebration!

We arrived at the Aurora Airport at 6am on Sunday morning and promptly were notified that we’d all be getting in a van to head 20 miles south. The wind was coming from an unusual direction, so we’d need to launch from a different location in order to find an adequate location to land. So we jumped in a 15-passenger van with twelve other guest and eventually arrived at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Woodburn.

The neat part about taking off from an alternate location is that when we arrived, we all had the opportunity to help out unloading the balloon equipment and getting things ready for our flight.

The Renaissance Man jumped right in to help (he’s on the right), by holding the entrance to the balloon while huge box fans began filling it with air.

The sunrise was sneaking up on us fast, so everyone worked quickly to help out. And when I say everyone…I mean everyone but me. I was snapping picture like the paparazzi!

I was amazed at the size of the balloon in comparison to the van. We learned that the balloon was purchased from a Mini Cooper dealership in England. It was used for a car commercial and then was purchased by our Captain.

Eventually the box fans were replaced with propane to start filling the balloon with hot air.

The Renaissance Man reports that standing so close to the tanks was a “very hot job.” I can attest to the fact that he was sweating even though it was a very brisk morning.

And then, ever so gently, the balloon began to rise off the ground and take shape. It was such a graceful thing to watch.

Before I knew it, we were all jumping in the basket. Here we are getting instructions…no dropping things out of the balloon!

Our hot air balloon was also joined by a fellow balloon, you can just see the outline of the balloon starting to take shape on the right. We beat them to the launch site by about 15 minutes which means we were the first balloon into the sky!

We rose up from the ground much quicker than I expected, and I was pretty nauseous for the first ten minutes. Our little van just kept getting smaller…

and smaller…do you see it in the lower right hand corner of this picture? It was in this moment that I had to stop looking down and instead look into the bottom of the basket and close my eyes for a few moments. Deep breathing helped immensely.

Big thanks to The Renaissance Man for continuing to snap photos while I tried to compose myself. Just look how tiny that other hot air balloon is in this picture. When you take off from the ground, you essentially go straight up into the air and reach the highest elevation of the entire trip. From there you slowly float down…

The views from the top were breathtaking. Once composed, I tried to keep my eyes on the horizon and focus on taking pictures. So much beauty!

The Captain captured some fantastic pictures of the guest during our hot air balloon ride by using a go-pro camera at the end of a long stick. This photo shows such an amazing perspective of being in the basket that I couldn’t resist sharing.

And for those of you who don’t know, The Renaissance Man likes to stay anonymous, so just imagine…you could be here!

I had great fun trying to snap creative photos of our balloon’s shadow. Can you see it there in the center left among the trees?

As we started to descend, our Captain had some good fun with us and touched the top of a few fir trees with the bottom of our basket. It was quite a thrill to be floating among the tree tops!

And before I knew it we were getting closer and closer to the ground..

The thing about riding in a hot air balloon is that you really just go where the wind takes you. And you never really know exactly where that might be, so we were carefully followed by our “chase van.” The van tries to maintain visual contact with the balloon at all times and once the pilot gets a feeling for where he might land, the ground crew often goes and starts knocking on doors to get permission to land on private property.

You can just barley see our chase van at the corner of the road.

Behind us we watched the other hot air balloon land in an adjacent field. It was a perfect landing as they came down and  kissed the Earth.

Our landing was equally as soft. Here we are all waiting to get out of the basket. It’s important that you listen to directions and get out of the basket slowly otherwise the balloon could end up back in the air again. Timing is everything!

It sure did feel great to have my feet back on the ground and I made a quick phone call to my parents to let them know that I survived!

We then worked as team to push the air out of the balloon and get it all folded up and back into the “balloon bag.”

It’s amazing to think that thirteen of us including the Captain all fit into this basket!

After arriving back at the airport we had brunch and toasted with champagne and orange juice. Our Captain then gave us a little history about ballooning and recited the Balloonist Prayer to conclude our early morning adventure.

“The winds have welcomed you with softness.
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands.
You have flown so high and so well,
That the gods have joined you in your laughter
and set you back again into the
loving arms of Mother Earth.”

Cheers indeed!