SLOTH BLANKET FREE

With increasing urban development these days, it’s harder to physically mark the ground with an X, so GPS tasks have been introduced. This marker is dropped or thrown at the target. “The competitors are given a bean bag with a tail on it as a scoring device.

“Because balloons have no steering wheel, the pilots navigate to the target by finding different direction winds at different altitudes,” says Allen Anderson, Chief Competition Officer of the race. However, it’s not a race about speed it’s about navigational accuracy to fly to different targets on the ground, where a giant X literally marks each spot. Then watch the balloons try to hit a targetĪt 7 in the morning each day, The Great Reno Balloon Race begins as each balloon team hops in their respective baskets when they’re primed to launch, and drops their sandbags to rise up into the sky. “For example, we have a 30-year relationship with Washoe County School and The Children’s Cabinet. We work with a multitude of charities in the community,” says Pete Copeland, Executive Director of the Great Reno Balloon Race. “We are more than just a ballooning event.

SLOTH BLANKET FREE

While the balloon festival prides itself in costing nothing to the general public, proceeds from Cloud 9 tickets and VIP parking passes help keep the event free to the community. Sitting out with a blanket or chair is one way to experience it all, but for a fee ($110), you can buy VIP tickets to the Cloud 9 VIP Club-a heated tent in the middle of the grounds serving a catered breakfast, coffee, and even bloody marys and mimosas.

To better assist those who may be half asleep at this time, there’s the pre-sunrise Super Glow Show each morning, in which a few of the hot air balloons hover above the park and serve as a beacon in the dim, daybreak sky with a flashing light show set to music. The balloons take flight at 7 am, when morning conditions are typically favorable, so Dawn Patrol is literally at dawn, around 5 am. One of the highlights of the event is called Dawn Patrol, when attendees get to see the hot air balloons rise from the ground as they inflate-as long as they’re awake for it.

The early bird catches the Super Glow Show It’s truly a community tradition where visitors are invited to snuggle up with the sunrise and then become part of the event, assisting pilots on the ground to get the balloons in flight.” “One of the best parts about this event is the love and local support. “It attracts visitors and pilots from all over the world,” says Charles Harris, president & CEO of Reno Tahoe. As its popularity grew, more and more balloon pilots got wind of it-some piloting quirky aircrafts, like Michael Celentano and his “Sheriff Airmadillo.” It began in 1981 with just twenty balloons as a sort of “filler event” in between the State Fair and the Reno Air Races, but evolved over the decades to be a festival on its own. “Community events and the outdoors bring strangers together to experience and celebrate our differences.”Īs the world’s largest free hot air balloon event, the Great Reno Balloon Race now attracts 120,000 visitors each year from all walks of life. “‘Keep Reno Weird’ is a pretty common thing to hear, and it’s something you can feel and take pride in when you’ve been here a while,” says Ben McDonald, longtime area resident and Director of Communications of the Reno Tahoe tourism bureau. It’s not just your typical lightbulb-shaped hot air balloons there’s also a hot air fish, hot air sheep, hot air tiger, giant inflated sloth on an inflated tree branch, Smokey the Bear, a clock with a funny-looking face, and a giant inflated Darth Vader head that just looks a bit weird without his body. As the gateway city of Burning Man, Reno is the perfect off-beat stage for such a peculiar gathering. This spectacle is the typical scene at the annual Great Reno Balloon Race, a three-day event each September (9–11 this year) in Reno’s Rancho San Rafael Regional Park. There’s also a UFO, an elephant, and a big Tweety bird head amongst the hundred or so colorful balloons filling the sky. An imposing shadow lurks over the roofs of residential houses in Reno, Nevada, in the shape of a sort of round body with appendages, a tail, and-is that a cowboy hat? Looking up reveals it’s a gigantic blue armadillo, dressed as a sheriff, in the form of a hot air balloon-and he’s not alone.

Sloth blanket