I went on a hot air balloon ride.  First, they took the balloon out of this really big bag and stretched it out on the ground .  Then they started these giant fans and began to blow up the balloon .  After a while, the balloon got bigger and you could see inside .  They let all sorts of people help .  The balloon got bigger and bigger  .  Soon, they started shooting fire into the balloon .  This made the inside of the balloon real hot and it got even bigger .  Pretty soon, it began to rise up off the ground .  They kept shooting fire into it until it stood straight up .  Then there were three balloons all ready to fly.  It was a real pretty sight .  When the balloon was ready to go, we climbed into the basket and someone took our picture .  Then, we took off .   It was so smooth and quiet you didn't even know you had left the ground until you turned around and looked !  There was some fog   on the ground and it made things look real strange .  Dogs barked at us as we dipped down real low over the river.  We could see our reflection in the water .  We went over three thousand feet into the air.  You could look up into the inside of the balloon and just wonder what it was that was holding you up.  Then we came down and landed in this farmer's field .  He wasn't home at the time, so he missed out on his bottle of champaign.  I'm sure the farmer would be sad if he knew.  That's all I did on my summer vacation.

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