Leaving elephant Butte tomorrow morning

You can click the pics but they are all starting to look the same... I'm badly in need of a new view!

Sunrise at Elephant Butte state Park.

It looks like I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for Gallup, New Mexico, and the long-awaited balloon rally. Unfortunately, the weather for the rally seems marginal at best; hot air balloons can't deal with much wind, I think ten mph is the max, and most of the weekend is going to be that or a lot more.

Not knowing much about balloons myself, it looks like the ballooners will have to start getting their balloons ready to fly before sunrise and then have a couple of hours of flying before the wind picks up and becomes too high. By then, the balloonists will have landed, packed up, and got back to the campground before breakfast.

Besides the wind, it's going to be cloudy a lot of the time, pretty darn chilly, especially at night, and a chance of snow before I pack up and leave for the much-anticipated warmth of the desert. Because I'm sure by then, I will have had enough cold weather that I will probably hug the first Saguaro I see.

I still don't know what roads I'm going to take to get to Gallup; there are several ways it can be done, and it doesn't look like one is any better than another, so I probably won't make up my mind until I put the information into my GPS tomorrow morning... I like to surprise myself; it challenges me, keeps me from getting too deep in a rut, and gives me a new view.

I'm looking forward to taking pictures of Gallup as much as the balloon rally itself. Gallup was one of the important towns along the famous route 66 and is even mentioned in the hit song "route 66," so I would assume there's still a lot of route 66 history in Gallup to keep an amateur picture snapper like myself busy if the balloons are grounded because of bad weather. And as a bonus, it just so happens there's a Cracker Barrel restaurant in town which happens to be one of my favorite places to go for breakfast... Just put a plate of "old-timers breakfast" in front of me and I'm as happy as can be.

Theboondork

A pink sunrise at the Elephant Butte Marina.