Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta: Neighborhoods that tend to have balloons come over them

(Transcript Snippet): “Tracy:

So balloon Fiesta, So Tego, let’s talk about what, what we see is neighborhoods where people love, love to live. That tend to get balloons coming over their neighborhoods this time of year. There’s lots of them. I mean, honestly, some years the wind pattern takes the balloons down towards the airport, but that’s not typical. Right? Typically we see the balloons go from east to west. Typically they head towards the river over a variety of neighborhoods between the balloon Fiesta site and Rio Rancho, the west side, the valley Vista Del Norte stay off. Osuna just west of [inaudible]. A lot of times the balloons go up and straight south and the land right there. There’s a big park, right by Osuna. So a lot of times, if you don’t want to go to the balloon field, if you go over to a Suna, if the Windsor right Vista Del Norte neighborhood, uh, has a lot of opportunities to see people and get up close to a balloon, if the weather’s right.

Tego:

And then there’s a lot of, uh, neighborhoods on the west side of Albuquerque, you know, west of the river that set up high that have big views and vistas over the entire, you know, Rio Grande valley is central, you know, central Rio Grande valley where we are here in Albuquerque. And so those people get amazing views. You know, our friends have a home it’s on the bluff And the west side, west side of the river, not too far from St. Pius, if you put that in perspective and, and that’s, um, you know, they get some amazing views. People see the balloons coming down the river going south.

Tracy:

And that’s what I was going to say. So the river there’s a lot of balloonists that like to do the, what do they call it? The dash diet dive in dash or whatever splashing, splash and dash. Yeah. So they, their goal is to go to the river, lightly, touch the water with their gondola and go right back up again. Right. So when you’re in the area of the river, a lot of times you can see balloons up close. A lot of times on the bridges, there’s parking on both sides at Paseo Montanyo Alameda. So a lot of times those parking lots are full during balloon Fiesta,

Tego:

Parking lot.

Tracy:

Yeah. Don’t park on the road. Um, but a lot of times, you know, you’ll see great views of, of balloons by the river there, but all along the west side. So, um, you know, a lot of neighborhoods where the balloon is, seemed to know that there’s good landing sites, not a lot of issues with landing. There’s not a lot of private land that, uh, is off limits because the is get a map of where they’re not allowed to land homeowners. And, um, institutions are able to say, you may not land here, right? Like you’re not supposed to land on the reservation. Of course it’s all fence stuff. So it’s hard to get your balloon out if you land where you’re not supposed to, you know, in Corollas, there’s a lot of, um, uh, balloons that we’ve seen come through and land in crowds, but there are a lot of wild or not wildlife animals, peoples domestic animals, horses, and other animals that the balloons, uh, freak them out. And then they can go running and run into their fences or things like that, or dogs that escape. So there’s a lot of areas that are off limits, but in general, a lot of properties to the west of the balloon field get a lot of,

Tego:

I think the takeaway is that you can enjoy the balloon Fiesta from a lot of different places in town. I mean, obviously being in the park, that’s the whole experience and being able to, you know, walk around, down with the balloons as they’re blowing up and the whole thing and the box and, you know, balloons would come up and then land back in the park. I mean, not the whole thing, but you can really enjoy the balloon Fiesta from all over the city. So, yeah, it’s great.