For nine days every summer, the central Iowa skies fill with colorful hot air balloons as part of Indianola’s National Balloon Classic. This annual festival is one of my favorites and draws thousands of balloonists…
National Balloon Classic
As the snow melts and the trees begin to bloom, there’s a certain energy that returns to the air, especially in a place with harsh winters like Iowa. But no more so than in the early days of summer. As a kid, that meant never wearing shoes, devouring endless books for summer reading, picking raspberries in the backyard, and escaping to the lake for a long weekend.
Even though I no longer have summers off, I try to approach summer with the same sense of excitement. And while I’m not a big fan of the oppressive humidity or buzzing mosquitos that accompany the season, there are a lot of things I absolutely adore about Des Moines in the summer.
In my last update, I talked about baseball games, the Pitchfork Pie Stand and more. This time I’m tackling a few of my in progress goals as well as some others you might have spotted a blog post about…
The National Balloon Classic has been on my Iowa bucket list almost since I moved here. But until this year, I never made it down to Indianola, Iowa for the annual festival. A few weeks ago, as I was heading out of town for a few days, I happened to turn a corner and find the sky speckled with colorful balloons mid-test flight, and I was practically giddy…