Freezing Our Balloons Off

It is a well-known fact that whenever Nui arrives at a new destination, the weather immediately turns cold and rainy.  This is such a common phenomenon that she has seriously thought of renting out her services to places that need water - such as Egypt or the Australian Outback.  Things have not changed in Yuma.  The weather gods took a while to catch on to the fact that she had arrived but, as expected, the weather turned nasty just in time for the annual Colorado River Balloon Festival.  Yuma got almost as much rain in a couple of days than it gets in a year. 

The rains abated (finally) but the weather remained very cold and windy on the night of the Balloon Glow.   This is an awe inspiring event, which has 20 or so hot air balloons tethered in a stadium.  At nightfall, they are all inflated and the sight of so many lit up balloons is really something to see (so they tell us).  On top of that, they offer tethered balloon rides, which RRR really wanted to do.  Being hardy Canadians, we ignored the cold and damp and trooped out to the stadium, paid our admission and sat in the bleachers for about 30 seconds before they announced the event was cancelled.  The fireworks show was still on though, so we sat and watched a whole lot of nothing for about an hour, ignoring the fact that we could no longer feel our extremities.  The fireworks lasted about 10 minutes, which was fine since by then we were pretty much the only audience.  All in all, it was a rather disappointing evening.  On the other hand, it got us acclimatized to cold weather again, which is going to be useful since we're heading home in a few days.  RRR's family has been telling us about the several inches of snow that awaits her.  Sigh......