Hot Air Balloon Ride, Willamette Valley, Oregon

I’m taking a break from my Europe posts for the next few weeks to share about an amazing adventure we had in celebration of Tim’s milestone birthday. Many of you may remember reading about our dear friends and travel buddies, Tim and Lisa. We’ve shared some wonderful adventures with them over the years, and last week’s was one for the books!

The clandestine planning for this surprise began several weeks ago, and was all Lisa’s idea. It included a stay at the luxurious Allison Inn and Spa nestled in the Willamette Valley Wine Country, a three-course dinner in their award winning restaurant, The Jory, and the pièce de résistance, a hot air balloon ride in the stunningly gorgeous Willamette Valley Wine Country.

The fun began by surprising Tim in the bar mid-afternoon. TheTravelsketcher and I were able to secure a table near the entrance. The look on Tim’s face as he entered and saw us sitting there was priceless. We enjoyed cocktails and snacks and lots of laughter over the next few hours, but he still didn’t yet know about the balloon ride the next morning.

After resting in our lavish room for a while we met them in the restaurant for an delicious three-course dinner.

As I already mentioned, The Jory is an award-winning gourmet, farm to table restaurant. They’ve earned awards from Wine Spectator, an OpenTable Diner’s Choice award and the executive chef, Jack Strong, was named a semifinalist earlier this year by James Beard in the Northwest and Pacific category. Click here to read more about the chef. Each course was perfectly paired with a delicious wine.

After our three hour dinner, we managed to waddle back to our respective rooms, while Tim was still pondering the surprise the next morning.

We met bright and early the next morning at 5:45 to make our way to the balloon launch site, and once we arrived, Tim mentioned that at 3am, he had figured out what the surprise was. By 6:30am, we were at the launch site, watching as the pilot and his crew prepared the balloon for flight. This is no easy task, as you’ll see in the following photos and videos.

Our pilot, Rob, asked for volunteers to help with the filling process; Terry and Tim were very willing helpers.

Rob explained that once the balloon was filled and in position, we had to hurry to get in, as it is difficult for the chase team to hold it down. Well, with my arthritic joints, I’m not very good at climbing or scrambling, and given that most of the eight other passengers were senior citizens, this was a bit of a challenge. But we all managed to climb in before the balloon left us behind.

🎶 Up, up and away, my beautiful, my beautiful balloon🎶 Original lyrics by Jimmy Webb. This song has been stuck in my head for weeks.

There were five other balloons in the air that day and the pilots communicated via radio about wind direction and elevation. We climbed to 2300 feet (700 meters) as Rob searched for wind currents. At times it felt as though we were not moving at all, just hovering in one spot.

The views, as you can imagine were expansive.

Wildfires in the central and eastern parts of the state caused the hazy skies .

That’s it for this week, but there’s still more to share about our ride which I’ll write about next week. I have many more photos and videos to share; too many for this post.

TheTravelersketcher also wrote about our ride, click here to read his post.

Lisa booked our ride through Vista Balloon Adventures, which I highly recommend if you’re in the area and want to take a ride.

As always, I would love to hear from you, so leave a comment if you’d like.

Wishing you grand and aerial adventures,

Tricia