Fun Times With Grandma - Part III (The Orange Balloon)

Here is the much anticipated blog about the ride on the Irvine Great Park Balloon...

These pix were all on my mom's camera and I just got them on Sunday evening. I just now got a chance to post them. Sorry that it's taken so long. Anyhow, on Thursday (August 21st) Grandma and Grandpa Eveland came out and we all went to the Irvine Great Park to take a ride on the Orange Balloon.

For those of you who don't know about the Irvine Great Park - it's an interesting story. For full details you can go to http://www.ocgp.org/

Basically, when the El Toro Marine base was closed it was auctioned off to the highest bidder. There was a big debate out here in the OC whether the base would become a new airport or a "great park". Needless to say, the voters didn't want another airport and we now have the beginnings of a very large regional park (in the neighborhood of 4,000 acres).

Right now, one of the main attractions is the tethered helium balloon that is just outside the entrance to the Preview Park. There are some really nice things about this attraction for a family such as mine. First, it's outside of the park entrance, so we didn't have to pay the $3 per car entrance fee. Also, the balloon flight itself is Free! When you've got a family as big as mine, FREE is always a BIG benefit. So, here are the pix. I'm including some of the view so you can see the remnants of the marine base and the beginnings of the Great Park.

Here we are ready to go. (notice all the orange - along the street leading to the balloon are large orange dots, you could never get lost!)

This is the entrance to the balloon as seen from the balloon. Can you tell this use to be a runway?

These are some more shots from the balloon showing how they're converting the former marine base . A lot of those trees you see are in HUGE planter boxes, haven't even been put in the ground yet.

I thought these pix were pretty cool. This is the area immediately surrounding the Balloon. The part that looks like a "bulls eye" is where the Balloon is tethered. Those little yellow dots clustered in threes are umbrella shades over picnic tables.

This shows looking down the center of the basket and then, looking up while we're in the balloon basket.

Now we're looking "around" the basket to see everyone who got to take a ride on the Balloon. By the way, I LOVE my Moby Wrap. It has to be the most comfortable and versatile baby carrier I have ever had - I wish that they were around 10 years ago when I had Brittney so I could have used it for all of my kids. You may also notice that Elise chose the correct color to wear for this outing.

There were other people on the flight with us, but we didn't bother taking pictures of any of them...

We all made it safely back to the ground.

The kids thought the bike racks were a pretty cool place to hang out after the balloon ride. We all really got a kick out of the bicycle shaped one!

The kids also found some comfy lounge chairs to hang out and relax in for a bit. These are some of those trees in the Huge planter boxes. I think these are going to stay in their boxes, but there are others that are going to be planted throughout the park. I don't think Levi liked his spot in the tree as much as the kids liked their lounge chairs!

So, there you have it. If you want to get more facts about the balloon you can go to http://www.ocgp.org/gpb/facts.asp

We really enjoyed our flight and hope to go again with Art. They recently started doing night flights too, so we'll have to check that out sometime soon. We'll be sure to keep you posted!