Just before I went to bed last night, Karen said that we had to be up and out the door at 4am because she had a surprise for me. I said ok but then spent the entire night checking the clock every hour. We got in the car at 4am, and I promptly fell asleep for about an hour. When I woke up, we were in Temecula at the Vindemia Vineyard. As we were parking the car, I saw the sign for California Dreamin’. We’re going for a hot air balloon ride.
After signing the waiver, eight of us (a couple from San Diego, a couple from Vancouver and a couple of girls from Northern Ireland) piled into the van along with the crew to drive to the launch site. Our pilot was Jeff who is rated number one in California and number twelve in the United States. We stopped at a corner in the middle of the wineries to launch a couple of small helium-filled test balloons to see how the winds were blowing. Jeff didn’t like the winds there, so we drove and stopped again, launched two more balloons and then decided this would be the launch site.
The crew got the balloon and basket out and begin to inflate it. We climbed into the basket (it wasn’t pretty) and started our flight with champagne and orange juice. You don’t realize you’ve actually left the ground since it is so smooth, like floating in a bubble. It feels very magical. It so quiet up there except for the occasional sound of the burners, and a dog barking in the valley. We spent the next hour floating over the vineyards in Temecula. At one point Jeff lowered the balloon into a valley, where we skimmed the tree tops, and floated over trees and a creek, between the hills. We saw coyotes, rabbits, horses, and lots of beautiful scenery. As we saw the ground approaching for our landing, I thought for sure that we were going over in the basket but we didn’t. All balloon flights end with more champagne and orange juice. The crew picked us up and drove us back to the winery, where we enjoyed a gourmet breakfast along with chocolate cake for the people celebrating birthdays. We went back to the hotel to enjoy a long nap and a lounge by the pool.
We had a few more places we wanted to see in San Diego, so we headed down the coast. We stopped in La Jolla where we found seals lying around on a beach, or swimming in the waves. (They looked like black Labs when swimming!) We kept driving down the coast and ended up in Balboa Park. Since we didn’t have blue sky, we decided that we would come back to the park tomorrow. We made a quick trip to Coronado Island to check out the Hotel del Cornado. We ended our day with a take out dinner from Panera Bread.
A big thank you to Karen for my wonderful birthday surprise.
