Well, we arrived back in Alberta to the cold weather - at least 100 degrees colder than our average day while on vacation. We went from shorts and bikinis (not me!) to gloves, ear muffs and snow boots in about two and a half hours...one minute we were sitting in the "way cool" outdoor airport in Palm Springs and the next thing, we were warming up our truck and scraping ice off the windshield in Calgary. I hate winter, just hate it! If I was a "trust fund" baby, or a lottery winner, I would be living in the desert for the whole Canadian winter, with the exception of Christmas. I can't imagine spending the holidays in a warm, palm tree studded place - it just wouldn't be the same. In my opinion, the only thing that our Canadian winter has going for it IS Christmas. The highlight event of our trip was the hot air balloon ride over the city of Indio, California. We were fortunate enough to find a company that had a big enough balloon to take all six of us up in the air at the same time. It was AMAZING!!! I didn't even know that we were rising in the air until we were waaaay up - it so smooth that you have no idea that you are floating away. I was not even nervous, not even one little bit...until...we stopped floating. We lost the breeze and we came to a complete and total stop. Have you ever just STOPPED, and hung, motionless, thousands of feet in the air? It is f------ scary! I had not one slight fear, until that balloon came to a stop. Then panic started to take over! It started in my stomach and felt like it was going to come out my mouth! I was crazy scared...everyone else was looking around and exploring the landscape, listening to the balloonist explain about the Fault Line, while my mind was trying to think up a Plan B. Frick! There is no Plan B when you are that high up in the air! About the time that I thought I was going to have to scream out my concern, we started dropping down. Then I had even a little more panic! I didn't know that the balloon commander guy was just ducking down a little to catch another breeze - I just thought we were going to die in someone's back yard! As soon as a breeze grabbed the balloon, we were off again, floating merrily along and all of my concerns drained away. It was amazing to me to see that I would react that way, I learned something about myself on that trip. If I am going to die, I will die with class and not utter one single word while doing it! The second thing that I learned is that a messy yard shows up from space. Not that there are many balloons floating around Southern Alberta that might fly over our yard, but I am going to take that into consideration next year!