Back home from Bluff

It will take a few days to recover from the Bluff Balloon Festival, quite literally.

We set up our booth Saturday morning and then Sandy went out to chase balloons so we would be able to print out card prints directly from her camera. Balloons and light are highly transient so you have to pay attention what's going on in the sky ... which can lead to mishaps on the ground. Sandy hit her knee on a rock and came back limping. EMTs looked at the knee at the show and then again at the Desert Rose motel that night. We iced it down and kept it elevated, but there was a lot of swelling Sunday morning. So, we decided to head for the Cortez hospital emergency room and get it checked out, skipping the flight from Valley of the Gods.

As it turned out, the pilots decided to skip Valley of the Gods, too, because of concerns about the treacherously muddy road out there. So, as we were leaving Bluff, there were balloons inflating all over the place! Sandy was comfortable and we spent a while tracking them around Bluff. We watched the Koshare balloon from Gallup, NM, catch the morning sun's rays as it was inflated in the parking lot of the Twin Rocks Trading Post, then started out toward Blanding and Cortez.

Seeing the balloons were trending upstream along the San Juan River Valley, I noticed a highway trending southward from the road to Blanding and we decided to take that for more views. Very soon there was a two-track heading across the countryside to the rim of the bluffs

... and my Jeep can't pass up a two-track!

It worked well! In fact, we took pictures there for a while, went back down Cow Canyon the SJR Valley, went up-valley for a while, then finished off by taking more pictures from the bluff-top site again. Though there was still a lot of haze that didn't give us the bright, snappy blue we saw last year (and which we heard was present Friday), we did have attractive views.

With the snow cover and the 19-degree temperature, the scene was positively Arctic! You could imagine pilots and passengers searching for polar bears! In addition to the frozen wasteland aspect, there were opportunities to see the balloons backdropped by the sandstone bluffs along the valley.

I especially like the picture next to the top of a red-and-blue balloon almost totally submerged in Cow Canyon, the narrow canyon on the east edge of Bluff through which you drive to Blanding. The balloon is 3-4 stories tall and it's hidden in that canyon!

The top scene is looking northeast from the rim of the bluff, away from the San Juan River Valley. The Abajo Mountains are in the distance, beyond the "Heart" balloon crew packing up after their flight.

And we did get to the hospital emergency room and Sandy did get her knee x-rayed and she doesn't have a broken bone ... but she does have to wear a leg-brace, use cold packs, elevate the knee and use crutches this week and go to the clinic for a follow-up at the end of the week. Bummer! tv