Up: Hot Air Ballooning near Ashland

We had a blast hot air ballooning near Ashland, Oregon even if it meant getting up at 5 am.  Our pilot (Ed) had us assist in the set up and take down of the balloon.   Here is a link to his webpage:

http://hot-airballoons.com/

He showed up with a small trailer which carried the balloon, basket and propane tanks. It was amazing that everything for our flight fit in such a small space.


Ed has a "top end" balloon with lots of redundancy such as two burners. Here is Ed testing the two burners.

A loud fan is used to initially inflate the balloon.

Any tangles our wrinkles then need to be smoothed out.  Here is a photo of us inside the balloon with Ed smoothing out the balloon.

Finally we are ready for the flight.  We were wondering where are the sandbags?  Turns out sandbags are only used for helium balloons.

We went up quickly with nice views of Mount Shasta.

The cows (black dots) sure looked small.

The landing was smooth, but Andreas had to get out of the balloon so the load would be lighter and we could jump the balloon over an electrified cow fence.  That was quite fun.  

We helped flatten the balloon with a "balloon hug" which means to sit on the balloon to remove excess air.

Here are the tracks of our hot air balloon adventure.  Thanks to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ .