You may have already guessed but I will just confirm for you. Yes, we went for a hot air balloon ride. It was me, my sister, my niece, my great niece and a friend of my sister that went on this wonderful adventure.

Please feel free listen to the music and watch the above video (not from our flight) but be aware that flying in a balloon is not like watching the video.

My sister and I had actually talked about doing this several weeks ago, before my husband and I attended the balloon festival in Metamora. When we began talking about it I had no idea it would happen so soon, but after the festival when we talked about it again, she asked when I wanted to go, I said, “I’m ready” and so was she. I began looking online for balloon companies in Michigan and when I came across Sky Adventures website, I liked what I saw.

The company is out of Oxford Michigan which is about 35 miles from our home. They have a long history (nearly 50 years) in ballooning, they have several pilots and fly up to 4 balloons at a time. When I made the initial call to Sky Advertures, Dennis the owner, was very friendly. He explained about the company and how the process (going on a flight) works. He told me they had a lot of openings for weeknights in September, but weekends were booked. He offered some potential dates, and I told him I would speak with my sister and get back with him.

Two days later my sister called him back and by this time there were 5 of us going. She originally scheduled our flight for Friday, September 6. As we waited and watched the weather forecast for that day, I became more and more convinced that our flight was not going to happen that day. Overcast skies and winds above 10 mph were not ballooning weather. I was not surprised when we got notice that we were not flying that day. Dennis told my sister that the weather was looking perfect for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the following week, so we rescheduled for Wednesday, September 11.

We again eagerly watched the weather forecast and by 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday learned that our flight was on. All of the passengers who were flying that evening and the balloon company were to meet at 4:45 p.m. at a restaurant in downtown Oxford. After we met our pilot and got our balloon assignment, we got into a Sky Adventures van with our pilot, Rich, and the chase crew. The van was towing a trailer with our balloon in it, and we went to the launch location. They have several locations in the area that they use for launching. This one was a school.

While all of us who were going up in the balloon rode in the van, we had three vehicles with our party that would follow our chase crew – our husbands and kids who decided to keep their feet on the ground.

At the launch site, while the balloons were being set up, the pilots and ground crews were happy to explain what they were doing and answer any questions about the balloons. I also learned that terminology is important when I referred to “blowing up” the balloon and was politely corrected by our pilot, “we inflate the balloons,” he said, “we try not to blow things up.” I thanked him for correcting me. 🙂

Two of the three balloons that went up that night being inflated. Our balloon is the mostly blue one on the left.

From this angle our balloon is on the right. Because of limited space the third balloon waited until the first two launched before being inflated.

Awesome and amazing are two words that I feel are overused in our society, however both were very appropriate to describe this event. The balloon that we flew in is actually named Amazing and when the pilot talked on the radio to the chase crew it was fun to hear him say “Amazing Balloon to Amazing Chase…” To keep in contact each of the balloons and each of the chase crews uses the Life 360 app, which allows for both verbal communication and gps tracking.

That’s me waving to my husband.

The flame is made by propane that heats the balloon causing it to rise.

I’m not sure how high we actually went but my husband assures me we were up quite high. Our pilot told us he like to fly between 500 and 1000 ft.

I mention that the above video is nothing like actually flying in a balloon. The main reason is that the video moves very quickly where the balloon actually drifts slowly along. They do not fly in winds greater that 10 MPH and this evening our pilot said at one point we register 4 MPH but mostly it was probably less than that. We probably could have walked as fast as we were flying.

At one point we flew over an area where our chase crew was stopped. My husband is actually standing next to our (silver) vehicle in the above picture. It’s tempting to refer to this as a birds-eye view, but the truth is birds have way better eyesight than humans and probably better even than my camera can zoom.

Much of the landscape we flew over was hilly and wooded. there were a lot of small ponds and many horse farms in this area. In the above picture the other balloon is preparing to make their landing. Our pilot told us that some of the homeowners in the area are very friendly toward them and welcome their landings while others do not like them landing on their property. They try to stay away from corrals and horse barns as the horses can be spooked by the balloons. They don’t know all the property owners in the area so sometimes they just have to land and take a chance.

The balloon in the above picture is landing on a farm that has given them permission to land in their back fields when needed.

I think our flight lasted about an hour. The sun is getting ready to set in this picture taken several minutes before our landing. Too soon for my liking we also landed. We came down on a property that was also known to be balloon friendly. Our pilot had remembered landing there before. The problem was that the driveway, like many in the area, had a locked gate across it so our chase crew did not have immediate access. I have to compliment Rich on such a smooth landing, while he warned us that we might feel a bump as we touched the ground, I never felt a thing. The homeowner did not seem to notice that we had landed on their place, we were quite a long way from the house, so when one crew member, who had hopped the fence, showed up Rich had him go to the house to ask if they could open the gate. When the lady (homeowner) came out to open the gate for us she told us that her husband was flying in one of the other balloons that evening. What were the chances of that?

The pilot and ground crew weren’t shy about asking for help when it came to taking the balloon down and were truly thankful there were so many of us to help, especially when it came to stuffing the envelope (the part of the balloon that holds the air) back into its bag.

Once the balloon was all packed up, we all returned to our original meeting location for a champagne toast and were given lovely Sky Adventures souvenirs. The restaurant also offered a discount for any Sky Adventures customers who wanted to stay for a meal. We were not able to stick around since we had to get home to close up the chicken coop and make sure the dogs were ok. (They are not used to us being away that long.)

Thank you for visiting and allowing me to share our wonderful, awesome, amazing experience with you. If there is anyone in the South-East Michigan area who is considering going on a hot air balloon ride please call Sky Adventures. You won’t regret it.