Freedom Weekend Aloft (picture post)

On Memorial Day, the family and I headed out to Freedom Weekend Aloft.   Freedom Weekend is a local hot air balloon festival that is held every Memorial Day weekend.  I had hoped to do a live blog post from there, but well, let's face it.   Seeing a bunch of hot, sweaty people sitting in the grass watching balloons doesn't really make for great entertainment.   So I will spare you the sight of hot, sweaty people and just dazzle you with beautiful hot air balloons, a giant cake, and people hoarding said giant cake.   So with out further adieu, Freedom Weekend in pictures.

BI-LO Grocery Store is one of the major sponsors for Freedom Weekend.  They also sponsored this massive cake. The cake was built to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the supermarket chain.

  Believe me, when I say that this picture doesn't even begin to capture the full scale of this cake.  There were parts of it that were designed to represent different aspects of the store.  You can see the basket of apples, there is also a box of fried chicken depicted in cake in the back corner. 


You could visit the tent and leave with massive hunks of cake that would feed small villages for days.  We even saw people taking away large tin foil pans of cake.  

My family of 4 shared one bowl!!!  And, we still ended up tossing over half of what we were served.  

After sampling the cake, we waddled our way over to the balloon launch site.   Thankfully the skies were clear and the balloons were able to launch on time.

 I would say that there were about 15-20 different balloon teams taking part in the festival.   In years past, they have had a hot air balloon shaped like the Energizer Bunny and a dog.   I keep hoping that one year, the Darth Vader balloon will make an appearance.   Although the Purple People Eater balloon was fun.