We were in Statesville last fall at Fort Dobbs and the Statesville Hot Air Balloon Show was also being held at the same time. When we left Ft. Dobbs we decided to stop and watch the balloons. My hubby used to live in Statesville and thought he knew  the general course that they take, so we decided to follow wherever the balloons went. As you can tell from the first pic, everything stops for the balloons.

One balloon caught our eye and we started trying to follow it. In the above pic it is the balloon in the bottom left corner.

What caught our attention about this balloon was the scene that was on it. At first we thought it was a pirate ship, but when it turned we saw that it was a nature scene with a bear, an eagle, and a pine tree.

Obviously this was before the cost of gas was an arm and a leg, because we were going all over the place chasing this balloon. Instead of storm chasers we called ourselves "Balloon Chasers".

As the wind carried the balloon we were going further and further into the country and we saw this trailer turning on a road and followed it.

We followed the trailer until it stopped at a house and we realized that the balloon was landing. We asked the person driving the truck if we could watch the balloon land. What happens is the balloon pilot finds a field big enough to land on and radios to his chase truck the location and they ask permission of the landowner to land the balloon there. They told that we could watch the balloon land and when we got to the field they told the boys that they could help with packing the balloon up. Besides our three boys there were two other little boys that were there also. The balloon pilot and his crew were awesome and so kind to let our boys experience something they otherwise wouldn't have.  The rest of the pictures tell the rest of the story.