We ended our vacation by driving up to Del Mar and going on a hot air balloon ride. This is something neither of us had ever done before. I think Jaime might have been a little scared, but we were mostly just excited about the experience.

We were shuttled out to a field with a bunch of other people. There are a few different balloon operators in the area, and apparently they all launch at the same time. Of the four balloons that went up, we lucked out and have one of the longest rides and also, I think, the prettiest balloon. One of the balloons was just a big pizza ad. Ours was rainbow-colored.

The balloon operators released a few helium balloons to determine wind speed and direction, and then decided to go ahead and launch from where we were located. They unload the baskets, roll out the balloons, and start filling them with cold air first. Then they heat the air with burners to get off the ground.

There were ten of us in the basket, plus our balloon operator. It was definitely full, with little room to maneuver, but it wasn’t too cramped. The balloon comes up to about waist height, and there are rope handles inside. Our balloonist did a good job of rotating us so that the scenery changed and we had different views.

If you’ve never done a hot air balloon ride before, I highly recommend it. The winds were calm, and I was surprised by how quiet it was on the ride. You never feel like you’re moving, partially because you usually go quite slow – 5 mph was the average speed.

I’d read in their literature that most people don’t actually have a fear of heights, but rather a fear of ledges, and that seemed to be true in our case. We never felt in danger or like we were going to fall. You notice how high you are when you first begin to take off, but after a few minutes, you lose that height perspective. I can’t quite explain it, but they’ve said that even people who have a fear of heights aren’t scared anymore once they’ve lifted off and are in the air for a few minutes.

We ended up going up to around 5500 feet. The balloonist said that the highest he’s taken people is around 6600 feet, but he personally has gone up to over 14,000 feet. I can’t imagine being three times higher than we were – we were already well above the fair-weather clouds that were hanging at around 2,000 feet.

From where we took off, we could see the coast to the west, La Jolla and San Diego to the south, and hills to the east. And directly below us were the very expensive homes of Del Mar. We saw Jenny Craig’s home and private horse racing ring, as well as the current home of Bill Gates and the lot where he is building something bigger and better – the lot alone cost $5 million.

We were in the air for about an hour, and Jaime got a lot of great photos. Check them out over at the photo gallery.