St. Louis

On our way to the arch.

Above are a couple of pics of the arch

We are riding in pod #3

This is one of 8 pods that go to the top of the arch. Kinda makes you wanna say Mork calling Orson come in Orson.

The two pics above are us in the pod.

The pictures above are from the top of the arch.

Goodbye Arch

Someone got a little thirsty after visiting the arch.

We used the places app on our phone and found this great restaurant the firefly grill. It is in Effingham, Illinois They grow fresh herbs on the property.

This is the pond behind the firefly

There were sunflowers planted everywhere.

The Trusty Steed

The Trusty Steed

This was our trusty steed for the last 16 days and 3764 miles.

We packed her to the brim.  We actually could not have been gone any longer we did not have anymore room.  By the end of the vacation Dad and I had mastered loading and unloading this beast.

Here is mom and  Brenda in the backseat notice the packages along the back of there heads.

This is the middle seat between Mom and Brenda.

This is the floor in front of Brenda

The back of the Dad's seat.

backseat floor

The back of the my seat.

The glove compartment.

The floorboard of my seat or lack there of.

The back seat.

Everything on the seat was in the middle console.

Hot Air Balloon New Mexico

This was the view from the lift off site.

This is us getting ready to take off on our hot air balloon ride with cloud 9 escapes. See the little square cutouts in the basket.  Those are used as a ladder to get into the basket.

We have lift off.

It was amazing how quickly this thing went up.  This is looking back down at the tracking truck where we just took off about 30 seconds ago.

This was taken by Dave the pilot once we got up there.

This is our alien balloon. When he would contact the tracking truck he was Rosi and the tracking truck was the mother ship.

The highest we went was between 1500 and 1800 ft. high. The temperature in the basket was 85 degrees. We covered about 25 miles of ground on our ride.

Just as we are getting ready to land the pilot asked who the most fragile ones were in the group. We told them Mom and Brenda. He put them in the back and Dad and I in the front. A hot air balloon hops as it lands it is not real rough hops but you can feel them.  They were kinda fun. After we get on the ground the pilot says uh oh! I can't stop it we are going over!! hold on everybody. We can see the people from the tracking truck running towards the balloon but they were too late. We were on our side like the basket is in the picture above and we kept getting dragged. Dad and I were laughing.  I almost peed my pants. Brenda had taken and bear hugged mom between her in the basket and both of them were laying on top of Dad and I.  It was hilarious.  The pilot probably thought we were weird because we were all laughing about the landing and weren't upset.

This is us with our champagne toast with the captain!  It was our first balloon ride and our first alien abduction!  What a great time!!!!