This past weekend, Abilene took to the skies as the Abilene Balloon Fest returned. The festival of fun and wonder was cut short as the weather turned uncooperative
Robin Hicks, alongside the Optimist Club, started the Abilene Balloon Festival in 1996, and ran it for nearly 25 years until COVID-19 grounded it to a halt. After nearly seven years, the co-owner of ABC Party Tents and Rentals, Jeremy Voss brought it back.
“The Abilene Balloon Festival was kind of birthed out of a desire with our party rental company to actually put on events rather than to just rent our stuff for other people's events,” Voss said.
Historically, the Abilene Balloon Festival has always launched at Redbud Park, this year it took place across the street from the Abilene Field of Dreams.
The festival featured 12 distinct hot air balloons, three supplied from corporations and nine from national touring balloon pilots. Attendees could pay $25 to go up in one for a ten-minute tethered balloon ride taking them three stories into the air.
Late into Friday night, visitors could hear the crowd’s reactions to the sight of the balloon glow as each canopy filled with fiery air, sending bright colors into the sky.
“When they did the glow event, when they first turned them on, when they blew them up, you could see the silhouette at night and you don't realize how huge they are,” Krill said.
Lynn Crill was one of the vendors at the festival and described her own enjoyment of seeing the balloon glow on Friday night.
“And then they would, in sequence, light them. And they would go on and off. And it was just, it was beautiful. Really pretty,” Krill said.
On Saturday, the event took a major hit from the weather.
In preparation for the weather, Voss says that at an event like this they don’t want to take chances, and the balloon meister makes the final call.
“Safety is our absolute utmost concern. My balloon Meister, it's a balloon Meister. He's the one who controls all the balloons. And he has final say on whether or not the wind conditions are safe enough or whether or not the pilots are safe enough,” Voss said.
At 7 am attendees arrived to watch each of the twelve balloons take off into the sky, but due to fog concerns this was moved to Sunday morning and was later canceled by the FAA.
One of the balloon pilots, Bill Baker, has been piloting for 49 years. Baker says they were doing their best-while watching the incoming weather
“So we're trying to get the balloon up, but we've got rain right over there. And that is, yeah, not, not very stable,” Baker said.
The plans included an evening ‘balloon glow’ – with pilots firing their propane burners to illuminate their balloons-all while the craft remained tethered to the ground.
On Saturday afternoon, some people set up lawn chairs and gathered on picnic blankets to watch the balloon glow –but they found mother nature had other plans. Due to the rainy and windy conditions, each of the pilots set up their baskets in the main fields and performed a candlestick glow where they light the burners without the canopy creating a candlestick effect.
Other guests waited in lines for the tethered balloon rides for several hours, one of those guests was Clarissa Duran. Duran brought her mom to the event for her birthday to fulfill their dreams of riding in a balloon.
“I saw where they're offering rides. So I got excited and I was like, well, that's her dream,” Duran said.
Due to wind and rain that swept in from the south, tethered rides were canceled as well.
Sammy Weygand traveled four hours from Oklahoma to see the balloon festival. Wygand says with any outdoor event weather can be an unpredictable force.
“Weather's weather. You can't control it. So you take your risk when you deal with outside event,” said Weygand
Despite the disappointment of the weather disruption–Jeremy Voss plans to try again. He says the problems didn’t dampen his dreams for the Abilene Balloon Festival.
“I would love to see the balloon festival grow into into a larger event. We're never going to beat Albuquerque, you know… But I'd love to see it where we have more balloons, where we have greater vendor participation and more stuff going on, more activities and events,” Voss said.
Voss says that for next year's event, they plan to improve their communication and location, and to increase the number- and-variety of activities for festival-goers to enjoy during the day.
