2024 Angel Fire and Driggs
I went to Balloons Over Angel Fire and Teton Valley Balloon Rally in June and July. Great rallies in smaller tourist towns. If you can afford the travel and lodging, you’re in for a good time. The locations look fabulous. The pilots love coming to these smaller but tightly knit events. And there be hot balloons. Everything you could want for a fun weekend event is there.
So, if you didn’t know about these events before, put them on your calendar for next year. I highly recommend them.
Skip down to the galleries below if you just want to see the images. Otherwise, I’m about to step onto my soap box. I have some concerns about the future of these events. Let’s talk about housing.
In both of these towns, I saw lots of development happening. Anyone could point and say, “hey, look, the town is growing”. But I am here to argue that the new construction isn’t really growing anything. The new construction that I observed were high-profit short term rental lodgings, and millionaire estates rather than homes and businesses.
Now building such developments isn’t inherently a bad thing. However, the towns aren’t going to grow if the working population is replaced with short-term visitors. But why are builders only building such things? Greed. If you have the time, the YouTube video below explains the housing crisis far better than I could ever. While the presenter never uses the term, “greed”, the reason is always, “money”. The ones financing the construction can’t fathom making a healthy profit. They must make ALL OF THE MONEY.
The working-class person cannot reasonably afford to live independently in these towns anymore. Some bunk up with other people. Some others live in an adjacent town. Some live a more nomadic life in an RV.
Whatever way people choose to live, this all leads to making it very difficult for families to form. Families tend to stay planted and make communities. This isn’t to say that people without children cannot make communities. But I think we can all agree that having an ever present younger generation to carry on traditions tends to help a lot in building communities.
Why do I care about this? Because hot air balloon events cater to local communities. But if there is no community, who are we then putting on a show for? You can’t expect faraway travelers to be aware of such an event. The millionaire on their plot of land sure ain’t going to care much when they only visit for ski season. Fellow travelers I met in the only hostel in Driggs never knew about the event. Small towns cannot put up a show like Albuquerque’s International Balloon Fiesta. They need the local population to participate.
But how can we fix this situation? The answer is simple but is nigh impossible in convincing the right people to employ it. Be less greedy. In the pursuit of making ALL OF THE MONEY, the ones financially backing our necessities keep raising the prices. “But they’re raising prices to counter inflation".
Hey, them raising the prices causes the inflation.
Property owner demands more money from their renters. Now the renters need more money to live in their home. Now the workers demand raises. The workers’ companies raise prices of their products. Yadda, yadda, yadda, the cycle will come back to costing the property owners more money and thus them demanding an even higher rent. The cycle only ends when there is no money left. And this means that the town is abandoned. The balloon rally is abandoned.
What’s wild to me is that we’re all taught that money most always grow, and it must do so exponentially. This teaching that we’ve all been through has led to rather destructive behaviors. Private Equity being the poster child of the end result.
What can we, as regular working-class citizens, do? I haven’t the faintest idea.
Okay, enough ranting. Let’s move onto photos.
