My family and I were outside on a beautiful summer evening, watching my little sister learn to ride her bike.  After a bit of riding, Carmen spotted a hot air balloon floating along above us.

Hot air balloons are a pretty rare sight for us.  We see the occasional airplane and sometimes a paraplane (now those are exciting!), but we hardly ever see a hot air balloon.

The balloon was coming down closer to us, so I ran inside to get my camera (obviously!) and with it I could see the balloon fairly clearly, even if it was still high.

We thought maybe it would land in one of our fields.  But alas, it sailed over the nearest one (which had tall corn in it anyway) and continued gently falling.  Some of us kids ran to get a better view of it, and we saw it slipping below the treeline.

From the field we hear Dad calling us and telling us to come get in the truck, because we were going to go see it land!  The great chase had begun.

Actually, it wasn’t much of a chase.  We drove to another field that wasn’t on our farm but was close to our house.  The balloon was in sight again, but it looked much bigger now.

In fact, it looked like it had already landed!  We were too late.  When we drove into the lane next to where the balloon had landed, we could see it in all its huge glory.  It was very colorful, and did I mention it was HUGE?  The operators let us come close and look at it before the let out the air.

Our aunt and uncle and our cousins were there, and other people.  It was amazing to think that a big piece of fabric and some hot air had flown several people miles away, and high into the sky.

Even if there are big fast jets that can take you where you want to go in the blink of an eye, I think there will always be something appealing about a hot air balloon.

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***Allison***