Hot-air ballooning in the USA

January 17, 2016 3:01 AM

Suggestions for a hot-air balloon festival in the USA in a picturesque location that might have other things to do with a middle-school and high-school age kid. Also, any tips for a first-time festival goer?

Since I'm not a hot-air balloon enthusiast, what can we expect? Are there only activities in the morning or do they continue all day? Can we volunteer to help with the balloons and, if so, how? Can we sign up for a ride in advance? I know New Mexico is a favorite location - are there any big-time festivals on the East Coast that you'd like to recommend? Thanks for any help you can provide!

posted by youdontmakefriendswithsalad to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (10 answers total)

Best answer: I've gone to the annual hot air balloon festival in Quechee, VT, on several occasions. It's an unbelievable sight, in a really beautiful part of the country. We went for a ride last time we went, and it was a really fun trip, and let me see that area of VT from a perspective I've never seen before. It runs in mid-June every year, and they're always looking for volunteers to help.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:41 AM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Hunterdon County, New Jersey, has a ballooning festival annually in the last weekend of July attended by thousands. It features hundreds of balloons and opportunities to go on rides, plus music (including at least one major headliner) and food, etc. The location puts you between New York City (45 minutes away) and Philadelphia (an hour and a half), as well as the famous Shore, so numerous additional sights are accessible as well. Hunterdon is a bucolic slice of New Jersey featuring scenic small towns and farmland stretching down to the Delaware River. I'm on a phone, so links don't work, but you can find more at balloonfestival.com.
posted by Otter_Handler at 5:39 AM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's a balloon launch in the Wisconsin Dells in early June; I can't find any hard information on when they're doing it this year, though. My mom took me when I was a kid. There's not much in the way of balloon-related activities once they're in the air except for watching them, but there's plenty of other things in the Dells.
posted by jordemort at 6:24 AM on January 17, 2016

I always went to the Great Forest Park Balloon Race and Balloon Glow in St. Louis when I lived there. It's free, it's set up in the same giant park as the St. Louis Zoo, Art Museum, and Science Center, and St. Louis is pretty great! I guess it depends on how you define picturesque?
posted by ChuraChura at 6:47 AM on January 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

Seconding STL. I have my issues with the city, but it is a great place to spend a long weekend. The balloons are great, and it's right in the middle of everything. Forest Park really is one of the best kept secrets in the entire United States. It's 1.5x the size of Central Park, and includes a zoo, a really great art museum, an history museum, a science center, a theatre, an ice rink, etc., etc., all of which is free. Plus you're in the middle of several great neighborhoods: the Delmar Loop, the Central West End, the Hill. You should have no trouble keeping the kids entertained. I don't know as much about the balloons themselves, though.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:57 AM on January 17, 2016

You mention New Mexico, so I'll link to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It lasts about a week and a half, including 2 weekends.

Not to be a downer but ... having grown up in St. Louis, I cannot recommend it. All the news you see in the last few years vindicates my view of it. Fine place if you're of European ancestry (as I am).
posted by falsedmitri at 8:07 AM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Louisville's Great Balloon Fest is a great one, I still remember it from my childhood. It is part of the larger Kentucky Derby Festival so there is a ton of other things going on too including a steam boat race! Louisville is a great city in general with lots of things to do all year round, its a great place to visit.
posted by Requiax at 8:56 AM on January 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Battle Creek, Michigan is home to one of the largest balloon festivals/air shows in the US. You can bring a picnic lunch and folding chairs and just camp out and watch all day, but my favorite time is the very first thing in the morning when they do a group launch (assuming great weather). Battle Creek has a nice, large zoo and not too far away in Kalamazoo is a great air museum (the air zoo) (and an airport if you are planning on flying in). Generally they do the big balloon launch in the morning, around dawn but it's *very* weather dependent. Then most the rest of the day there are a bunch of vendors and fair rides, meet and greets with various pilots, the Thunderbirds and various planes and such doing aerial stunts and sky writing. At night they do fireworks. I, usually, go and meet up with a group of friends and relatives and just spend the day kinda hanging out. When I go by myself I usually will go early in the morning to photograph the launches and then grab some coffee and wander through the vendor booths, maybe photograph some planes and then call it a day.

During the actual festival they generally don't allow balloon rides (tho they have offered tethered rides previously), but you can easily get them the week ahead/after. The festival is part of a greater competition for the ballooners.

I've never done it, but I assume you would have to contact the balloon teams directly if you wanted to volunteer with them.

It's a pretty inexpensive area, as far as hotels and things but not a ton of large attractions, however it's centrally located and about 2 hours from Chicago and Detroit, 3 hours from Indianapolis, lots of other events/attractions/cities nearby if this is part of a larger vacation.
posted by AnneShirley at 9:46 AM on January 17, 2016

The National Balloon Classic in Indianola, Iowa.

As far as other things to do, Indianola is just west of Lake Red Rock if the kid is interested in outdoor things. It is just south of Des Moines, with all kinds of things to do there including a science center, botanical center, and other cultural things.
posted by Fukiyama at 5:11 PM on January 17, 2016

When I was a high schooler in Decatur Alabama, a friend and I volunteered on a crew at the Alabama Jubilee. We had a lot of fun, and I learned a bit about balloons and what it must be like for the people who do this all the time. We signed up (at the time, that was making a phone call, these days there appears to be a call for volunteers under on the website), went to an "opening reception" party and met our crew, they told us when/where to show up the next day; we had a couple of early mornings and were in general pretty busy. The kinds of jobs we did included helping roll out and arrange giant swaths of balloon fabric around a fan, holding a rope while they got ready to launch, riding around in their truck while looking out the window trying to track the balloon and comparing that to the map, then as the balloon and the truck converge on a land site, hop out and hold ropes as they're handed to us, and help deflate, flatten out and fold up the balloon fabric to pack it away again. All this is to say, it was really really interesting, but not "magical". They did take the two of us up on the last day as a thank you, though that's not guaranteed (basically they didn't have other passenger plans and the weather was good). Note, this was approx 1990, liability laws and community habits may have changed since then. I'm really really glad we did that, had a good time volunteering, and got a cool perspective on the inside of the hobby/business - but the experience was nothing like calling up a balloon rides company and going on a charter flight, so know what it is that you want to do.

Anyway, the Alabama Jubilee is over Memorial Day weekend, and Decatur is a fine town but not a tourist destination. But if getting involved is what you want, maybe a small festival would be the place to start?
posted by aimedwander at 8:50 AM on January 18, 2016