Balloons and Rainbows near Albuquerque, New Mexico

This morning DeDe and I got up early and headed into town to watch the balloons.  Because of weather conditions they didn't lift off as early as they were scheduled to but they were only delayed by about 45 minutes.

We were watching from Sandia Casino gas station just up the hill.

Early morning fog along the Rio Grande river, drifting south.  Balloons on the ground.

Balloons above and below the fog.

Before long the fog was gone and the clouds had lifted a bit.

After our balloon watching we headed back home.  That brings up the subject of where we're parked.  In years past the Sandia Casino, which is up the hill from the balloon field, has allowed rv's to park in their rv parking lot for free, and that's where we were last year, along with about 100 other rv's.  But not this year.  They were only letting rv's park in their employee parking lot and were charging anywhere from $75 - $55 a night.  When we first got to ABQ we parked way south of town at another casino that has an rv park and stayed there a week.  Then we started hearing about the Sandia Casino charging so we went 15 miles north of town to the San Felipe Casino which has an rv park but also allows you to dry camp for free.  We have spent almost 10 days here, most of that dry camping and 3 days with electricity. We moved into an electric site so I could run the vacuum and clean house.  This casino is next to an abandoned race track.  It's not in use now because the contractor who built it didn't do a great job and it is now "red tagged".  

During a rainstorm.

After the storm.

We'll be leaving this week heading south to Elephant Butte Lake.  I'll catch up with you soon.

Evie and Joy

There's still lots of fall flowers around, and butterflies too, can you see two of them.