A little over a month until those colourful hot air balloons take to the skies over High River.
The Heritage Inn International Balloon Festival is ready to go, but organizer Jamie Kinghorn says there'll be a change this year with the Balloon Glow.
"The really big news right now is we've pretty much finalized things with the Town Emergency Services and Planning and that we're going to be moving the glow from the Macleod Trail site where we fly from and moving it over to the west side of the Wallaceville area to that big open field there."
"We're expanding the area to make more room for the balloons, more room for the public and more food trucks, all that sort of stuff so we're really excited about that move," he says.
Centre Street will be closed for about four hours from the bridge to the Tim Horton's intersection, but shuttles will take spectators in and out of the area while locals can walk in.
There are 25 pilots registered for this year's event ad a couple more have asked to be put on the waiting list.
They're coming from across Canada, the U.S. and Peter Van Overwaal from Belgium will be back flying the Princess Nellie balloon.
Kinghorn and his Eye of Ra balloon have been busy the last while.
"There's two events I usually go to, one in Riverton Wyoming which is a really good event, it's been going for over 40 years now, and then on my way back, I did the Billings (Montana) event which was the weekend after. That event is pushing 35 years so these are both long-running events so it's kind of fun to go down and talk with other organizers about how their events are going and share ideas and concepts of what we can do in High River to make our event a little bit better."
This is High River's tenth event although technically not its tenth anniversary.
The Heritage Inn International Balloon Festival runs from September 21 to 25 with the Balloon Glow Friday, September 23.
Balloons in Heritage Inn Lobby
Sat, Apr 20, 4:30 PM
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